A University of Arizona Law School employee received an unusual voicemail on Sept. 12, 2024.
“I see you’re a director of special projects. I’d like to ask if you could do me a special project where you help me and your husband’s career for being a crooked (expletive) … prosecutor," a man named Lane Myers said.
He wasn’t yelling, but he sounded frustrated. He mentioned his partner was an alum of the law school. And then he grew more aggressive.
“We got two sides that are about to come crashing together,” Myers said. “So you can help me teach your husband how to follow the law, or I'mma take his career.”
The voicemail was for Shannon Walker, the wife of a Tucson city prosecutor named Matthew Walker. Matthew was involved in two cases filed against
the man who left the voicemail.
A month later, Shannon Walker told a judge the voicemail was just the start of a series of calls and emails from scores of people that threatened and terrified her.
Myers, a 43-year-old Tucson resident, was a YouTuber who went viral after posting videos about his own case involving Matthew Walker. He offered critical and vituperative commentary, and while it wasn't his source of income or full-time job, he quickly grew his following from hundreds of followers to more than 12,000.
Those followers eventually turned their sights on Shannon, and she pleaded with a judge for a protective order.
She and Matthew would tell the courts they received messages from Myers’ followers threatening rape, encouraging suicide and trying to get their children taken away by authorities.
The experience for the Walkers hearkened back to the murder of UA Professor Thomas Meixner, who in 2022 was shot nine times by a former student while on campus. Meixner and other faculty and students had repeatedly reported threats made by the killer in the year before.
Shannon Walker wanted the courts to forbid Myers from contacting her, but she also wanted more. She wanted his videos to stop.
That effort led to a years-long legal battle that still is ongoing. It has pit a community of unruly YouTubers and judicial-transparency activists against a prosecutor and university employee. It has led to raucous court hearings, multiple indictments, judge recusals and back-and-forth accusations of incompetence and corruption.
Myers was jailed for months and pleaded guilty to felony charges of harassment and stalking.
He was put on probation. And just when it seemed like the saga might finally be over, it erupted once more in the summer of 2026.
After Myers began posting about his case on YouTube again and taking interviews on other YouTubers’ channels, the Pima County Attorney’s Office accused him of violating his probation.
He was arrested July 8, 2026, by probation officers and jailed again. He remains behind bars.
Now, a judge will decide whether to revoke his probation, a decision that could mean prison time for Myers. His next hearing is Sept. 14.
Myers, who spoke with The Arizona Republic by phone from jail three times, has fiercely defended his activity as protected under the First Amendment. He described the county’s latest accusations against him as “silencing me talking about my own case.”
But Myers’ defeats in court so far have shown the limitations of a free-speech defense, and it’s unclear what speech rights will be afforded to someone who already pleaded guilty to harassing and stalking for similar activity.
Even as judges have acknowledged First Amendment implications in Myers’ cases, they have repeatedly viewed Myers’ activity more in line with criminal conduct than protected expression.
First Amendment experts have likewise suggested Myers may not be on solid legal footing.
“The First Amendment does not create a carte blanche situation where people can engage in certain kinds of clearly antisocial behavior that just makes everyone else’s life a problem,” said Brennen VanderVeen, attorney with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free speech advocacy group.
Yet experts also said Myers shouldn’t lose all First Amendment rights. There could be problems if probation conditions prohibited Myers from saying anything about his cases or about the city prosecutor, who’s a government official, they said.
Myers' own attorney, Mark Resnick, said that's exactly what the case is about and that the county is inappropriately trying to hold Myers responsible for the action of others.
The outcome of Myers’ probation hearing likely will draw a line between what he can and can’t broadcast to YouTube as a convicted felon. It also could illustrate how far courts are willing to go to suppress one person’s speech to protect another person's safety.
Prosecutor husband and Lane Myers had a history
Myers and other YouTubers who support him have pointed to his backstory with Matthew Walker as critical to understanding the grievances he took out on Shannon Walker.
Matthew Walker’s encounters with Myers started four months before the September 2024 voicemail to his wife.
Employees at an O’Reilly Auto Parts in Tucson called the cops on Myers in May 2024. There was a dispute over a part he wanted to return and a comment he made that an employee interpreted as a potential threat, according to court documents.
He returned to the store six days later, waiting for the employees after hours and shaking the door, employees told the police.
He was arrested on suspicion of two charges of disorderly conduct.
Myers was outraged, believing that his initial comment that spurred police involvement was constitutionally protected free speech.
Matthew Walker prosecuted the case. It eventually was dismissed, but Myers’ anger didn’t subside.
Myers’ second interaction with the city prosecutor stemmed from a citation he received at a June 4, 2024, Tucson City Council meeting.
Myers told The Republic he planned to complain about his O’Reilly case during the public comment period, but he couldn’t because he was kicked out.
The council was issuing a proclamation about gun violence prevention. As the audience roared in applause, Myers audibly booed. Mayor Regina Romero directed police to eject him from the meeting.
Myers was cited again with disorderly conduct and also for refusing to provide his name to an officer, according to police records.
He said he was told he couldn't return to City Hall until the case was finished.
The incident raised questions about a potential violation of Myers’ First Amendment rights. While city leaders have broad latitude over the management of their meetings and can eject attendees for disruptions, courts typically reject when the government accepts some viewpoints but rejects others.
Myers was again furious and set his sights on Matthew Walker, the assigned prosecutor.
The case was transferred to Pima County Justice Court, meaning it was no longer Walker's case, and it was dismissed. But Myers remained angry at him.
Why Myers pivoted to targeting the prosecutor’s wife
Myers’ pivot to targeting Shannon Walker came after he turned to the University of Arizona's James E. Rogers College of Law for legal help, he told The Republic.
He said he knew the school offered programs that provided resources to the public because his then-girlfriend had graduated from the school. He found Shannon Walker’s name on the website and learned she was the wife of the city prosecutor he already had a vendetta against.
Because her biographical webpage on the site said she worked in career development programs, Myers figured that meant she connected students to jobs at her husband's office and worked with him in a professional capacity.
The assumed work connection, combined with the fact Shannon was employed at a publicly funded university, was enough for Myers to think he was legally protected to call her and complain about her husband, he told The Republic.
Aaron Caplan, a First Amendment expert who formerly taught at Loyola Marymount University's law school in Los Angeles, disputed Myers’ claim that he was protected because Shannon worked at a public university.
“Not everybody who works for the government is a government official,” Caplan said. “The janitor at City Hall is a public employee. (But) you don’t have a First Amendment right to harass the janitor at City Hall.”
The events leading to the injunction against harassment
A week and a half after Myers left Shannon Walker the voicemail, he posted a nine-minute video that spotlighted her law school biography webpage.
The video primarily targeted her husband. Myers spoke vaguely about winning and losing, while interspersing clips of Ultimate Fighting Championship interviews with fighters after matches. As a standalone video, it wasn’t clear what Myers was talking about.
When Myers turned to Shannon Walker’s webpage in the video, he circled her contact information with his computer mouse and said he was “studying his opponents.”
Toward the end of the nine-minute video, Myers said he doesn’t want to be bothered, “but if you bother me, I’m going to bother you. But not physically or violently. Just mentally and intellectually.”
Shortly after Myers’ voicemail and amid his YouTube videos, Myers’ then-girlfriend lost her job as a clerk for a federal judge in the city.
There was no evidence, but Myers accused Shannon Walker of playing a role in the termination in another video he posted Oct. 2.
The Walkers seek recourse through the courts
After about five months of interaction between Myers and one or both of the Walkers, they sought court intervention.
Matthew Walker asked the court to find Myers not competent enough to stand trial and Shannon Walker sought a type of protective order called an injunction against harassment. The actions only further enflamed Myers.
Matthew Walker’s Oct. 8, 2024, filing focused on Myers' lack of legal understandings, inability “to control himself in court” and targeting of his wife.
In August, Pima County Superior Court Judge Sarah Mayhew “did state on the record that (Myers) was held in contempt at that hearing,” Matthew wrote.
In Mayhew’s minute entry, she wrote that Myers “used profanity, flipped his middle finger and displayed profane signs to the Court. The Court attempted to ask (Myers) to refrain from using profanity, threats or insults in the court or in filings to the court.”
After Mayhew’s contempt order, Myers emailed her, saying he would “hire billboard trucks to park in front of your house from the time you wake up, until the time you go to sleep.” He signed off with a misogynistic remark: “It’s called contempt of (expletive)."
Mayhew recused herself.
Myers posted a video response rebuking the filing. In it, he blamed Shannon Walker again for his girlfriend's firing and showed the webpage with her professional contact information.
“It’s public information,” he said. “This time, I’m telling everyone, ‘Call her’ and address grievances with this public employee on this public website.”
To get the injunction against harassment, Shannon Walker pointed to Myers’ voicemail, the video where he showed her webpage and said he was “studying his opponents,” the video where he accused her of foul play in his girlfriend’s firing and posted her contact information, and the video where he criticized Matthew Walker’s court filing and encouraged people to call his wife.
Shannon Walker said she got four calls and two “generally threatening” voicemails after Myers’ videos.
The same day she was in court seeking the injunction, Myers went to her workplace. He filmed himself walking into the law school, waiting outside her office and showing the camera her office door number.
He told her colleagues that he was a “reporter” working on an “investigation” about her and was seeking an “interview.” To bolster this claim, he later told judges his company was registered with the state. Arizona Corporation Commission records show Myers registered “Freedom Productions LLC” in December 2023.
Shannon Walker returned to the court the next day. She told a second judge, according to an audio recording, that she wanted to redo the order because she had placed her children’s names on the document and realized it was a public record. She said she feared what Myers and his followers might do to her kids.
The first and second injunctions led to more criticism from Myers that she was “judge shopping,” a term that refers to selecting a judge believed to issue a favorable ruling.
According to audio recordings of the first hearing Oct. 9, the judge granted the injunction but said she was unsure whether it could block Myers from creating additional videos, citing “overlays … with the First Amendment.”
In the second hearing, a different judge said the new order “prohibited (Myers) from posting any messages or content regarding the plaintiff via any social media platform.”
Myers' attorney Mark Resnick told The Republic Myers made a video about what he viewed as judge shopping because in his mind, "They're using their positions as government employees and being members of the Bar to gain advantages that people wouldn't have, which is newsworthy."
Judge rejects Myers’ challenge of the anti-injunction but does narrow it
Myers challenged Shannon Walker's injunction at a raucous court hearing Nov. 14, 2024, before Judge Brenden Griffin.
He argued that his calls and videos were protected by the First Amendment because Shannon was a public employee, paid through public funds.
The voicemail, he said, was intended to learn more about if her office worked with her husband's office and to complain about Matthew Walker.
Myers' in-person visit to her office was “to interview her, to see if she got my (girlfriend) fired,” he said. Myers said his girlfriend was suddenly fired after apparently someone had called her boss. “And I believe it was Ms. Walker,” he told the judge.
The workplace visit shouldn’t be seen as harassment, he argued, because Shannon Walker’s colleagues had walked him to her door and offered to knock and check if she was there. Myers pointed out that he rejected the offer in consideration of how that might make her feel.
When Griffin pushed Myers to answer for why he was going to Shannon Walker for grievances about her husband, he replied, “Because I can … and I only did it once. And it’s my right as a (reporter) to call her and address her in my way. I didn’t tell her I was going to threaten her, hurt her, in any way, shape or form.”
Griffin was skeptical at first that some of Shannon Walker’s evidence counted as harassment. One of Myers’ videos was certainly about her but not directed at her, he noted. The judge shifted his tune when a voicemail was played.
“Are you the dumbs--- that married Matthew Walker?” one man said. “People are going to be kicking your (expletive) in a prison cell for your corrupt husband and your criminal behavior. … We the people will own your (expletive). Get ready, (expletive)! Get ready! It’s coming.”
As it played, Myers threw up his arm with a fist.
“Mr. Myers, it seemed like you were trying to hold back laughter, and then you kind of raised your fist up as if you were supporting the comments,” Griffin said.
“No, my suit’s a little short,” Myers replied.
“I don’t believe you,” Griffin shot back. “That’s what the court’s putting on the record.”
The judge upheld the injunction, finding that the voicemail, YouTube videos and attempted in-person contact at work amounted to a “series of acts” necessary for the anti-harassment order. The YouTube videos, Griffin said, were causing third-party contact because of Myers’ encouragement.
Myers erupted in fury and accused the judge of bias. When Griffin told him to calm down or leave, he left.
Myers later told The Republic he had ADHD and believed that worked against him in court.
"My credibility, right there, changed. At first, (the judge) was OK. He was talking about the law," Myers said. "Then when my mannerisms and all that took over, he's like, 'Yeah, this guy's an idiot.'"
Griffin, after the dispute, said in the courtroom, "I can totally understand why she is alarmed, scared. I think not only a reasonable person would be, but I think almost any person would be. I think it'd be unreasonable not to be."
Shannon Walker, who had remained stone-faced nearly the entire 90-minute hearing, wiped tears with a napkin.
The judge continued, “I'm specifically finding that I think the defendant’s purpose is specifically designed to harass and bug and annoy. And I think his conduct in this hearing has confirmed that.”
Still, Griffin narrowed a condition the previous judge issued.
Rather than forbidding Myers from posting “any messages or content regarding the plaintiff via any social media platform,” the new order forbade Myers from posting her contact information and using social media to “directly or indirectly encourage third parties to contact (Shannon)” or go to her home or work.
“What I’m trying to do there is balance (Myers’) constitutional rights with the right of this plaintiff not to be harassed,” Griffin said.
He was planning to give Myers a chance to persuade him otherwise or recommend different wording, the judge said, but that the chance was no longer possible since Myers left.
Myers goes to jail, then pleads guilty
It wasn’t long before Myers and the Walkers’ paths would cross again.
While they were navigating the injunction process — a civil action — the Pima County Attorney's Office was pursuing separate, criminal charges against Myers.
Spokesperson Shawndrea Thomas said the County Attorney's Office ended up with Myers' case because he had "misdemeanor charges in the City of Tucson and they conflicted the case out to our office."
The charges related to his activity both before and after the injunction was issued. Some of the same things Griffin ruled were civil harassment, the County Attorney's Office considered criminal, misdemeanor harassment. The county also accused Myers of violating his injunction orders, escalating those actions to felony aggravated harassment.
And for the totality of actions between September 2024 and February 2025, the county accused Myers of felony stalking.
He was indicted by a grand jury on March 7, 2025, on 14 counts. He was released, but then he was taken back into custody March 26, on suspicion of violating his injunction for additional videos he made. On March 28 of that year, while already in custody, Myers was indicted again.
This time, there were six counts, all from activity Myers partook in after his release. They included felony aggravated assault and stalking again, but also new charges such as misdemeanor interfering with judicial proceedings and misdemeanor intimidation and threatening or harassing through electronic communication.
In a victim impact statement, Shannon Walker told the judge that hanging over her experience with Myers was "the memory of Dr. Thomas Meixner, a professor who was murdered on our campus less than three years ago by a man with a chillingly similar pattern of stalking and threats."
"That tragedy still haunts the University community. And now Mr. Myers — who openly urges others to seek out and confront me for my supposed 'misconduct' (which he has never been able to coherently define) — has revived that fear," she wrote.
After months of legal filings and back and forth, Myers took a plea deal that let him out of jail and put him on probation.
He pleaded guilty to one count of felony harassment and one count of felony stalking.
Myers said First Amendment attorneys had advised him against the plea. They told him that if he was found guilty he could appeal the conviction, but he wouldn’t be able to do so if he pleaded.
Myers’ life was falling apart, though, he said. His girlfriend had lost her job and they faced financial pressures. Also, he had a different legal take.
“It’s an illegal plea; I knew I could get it overturned on post-conviction. Like, I knew how to play the system,” Myers told The Republic.
He was released July 1, 2025.
This time, when he went home, he didn’t return to YouTube.
He stopped posting. He stopped commenting. The Walkers told the court they stopped getting voicemails and emails.
But about a year later, he started posting again.
Myers jailed again after accusations of probation violation
In June 2026, Myers asked the court to change the conditions of his probation. The court declined, but before he received that answer, he began posting videos and participating in other YouTubers’ videos.
On his own channel, he began posting documents related to his case with Shannon Walker that showed her name. In another video, he posted a meme that included the text “Shannon Walker” and showed pictures of an Australian rugby player whose name is Shannon Walker and an astronaut whose name is Shannon Walker. The rugby player’s shirt is edited to say “Lane’s lying, legal losers.”
In another video, he explains that this is OK for him to do because he’s not naming his victim and the photos aren’t of his victim.
Once again, Shannon Walker began receiving voicemails and emails. One read, "Hey Stupid (expletive). Did you think you got away with your lies? Get ready to lose everything you own to Lane Myers. Hope your ready for war."
Another simply said the C-word nearly 300 times.
The County Attorney’s Office petitioned the court to revoke Myers’ probation on July 8. He was again booked into jail.
The county’s petition cited Myers' videos, but also videos from other YouTubers.
The county claimed Myers distributed deposition videos of Matthew Walker and a Tucson police detective for other channels to post. The county also pointed to interviews Myers was conducting by phone from jail with YouTubers who then livestreamed the conversations and displayed photos of Shannon Walker as Myers talked about his “professional victim.”
These acts, the county claimed, violated Myers’ conditions of probation. Some of those included to not “post information about the victim, her husband or her minor children on YouTube,” and, “Do not engage in activities that would be reasonably expected to cause others to harass or contact the victim or her family.”
Mark Resnick, Myers’ attorney in the probation hearings, argued that the conditions didn’t ban him from talking about his case, and that the county was trying to hold Myers responsible for the actions of others.
Myers was allowed, Resnick said, to talk about his opinions on his own case, and he was also not banned from providing deposition videos from his case, especially those not related to Shannon Walker. Myers also shouldn’t be blamed for other YouTubers’ displaying photos of the victim or harassing the victim because Myers doesn’t control them, Resnick said.
He compared it to holding The New York Times responsible for the assassination attempts against President Donald Trump.
Resnick, during the hearing Aug. 11, said the county’s case was about not liking Myers’ speech. While it may be offensive, he argued, it was protected, political expression.
Arguments expose rift between harassment laws and free speech
The arguments between Myers and the Walkers highlights a gray area in First Amendment law. Though the U.S. Constitution protects offensive speech, Arizona’s anti-harassment law,last updated in 2022, criminalizes repeated contact and communication that “seriously alarms, annoys, humiliates or mentally distresses” a reasonable person.
Harassing speech doesn’t lose protection in the same way defamation or true threats do, VanderVeen, from FIRE, said. Instead, harassment is regulated as conduct. The more courts see the activity in question as conduct or behavior, instead of speech, the less protection it’s going to receive, VanderVeen said.
But he and other experts, like Caplan from Loyola, said Myers’ initial guilty plea significantly changes how the court will look at the latest accusations.
“Courts have upheld and it's very common for probation … to contain limits on someone's constitutional rights in ways that would be absolutely unacceptable for someone not on probation,” VanderVeen said.
Caplan said orders that ban speaking “about” someone or prohibit contacting a government official are “potentially problematic.”
“Because that covers even saying things that are true or even saying things that are not harassing,” he said.
He also noted, “The ability to communicate with the government is an important aspect of democracy, and the First Amendment has something to say about it.”
The question over exactly how far the government can go in limiting the rights of a convicted person, however, remains unresolved.
“The judge will need to say, ‘OK, I understand that we usually don’t like ‘never talk about this person’ orders. (But) is this a situation where it’s actually OK because it’s part of a criminal sentence?” Caplan said.
Already, Myers' probation hearings have lasted two full days, far beyond the typical length of most of these types of hearings. Some of his supporters, as well as some of his critics from within the YouTube community, have attended. The next hearing is Sept. 14.
In the meantime, Myers remains in jail.
Taylor Seely's role covering First Amendment issues at The Arizona Republic / azcentral.com is made possible by a collaboration among Freedom Forum, Journalism Funding Partners and the USA TODAY Network. Freedom Forum does not provide editorial input.
Do you have a story about the government infringing on your freedoms? Reach her at tseely@arizonarepublic.com or by phone at 480-476-6116. She can be reached on Instagram at @taylor.azc.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Tucson man's vendetta against prosecutor's wife tests free speech limits
