A Tucson YouTuber who pled guilty to stalking and harassing a city prosecutor’s wife was sentenced to three years in prison after a judge found he violated probation by posting videos about her online.
It was double the amount of time recommended by prosecutors in a case that has pitted a community of YouTubers who saw the issue as a violation of free speech rights against Pima County-area prosecutors who saw it as a matter of public safety.
Pima County Superior Court Judge Douglas Metcalf sided with prosecutors and said Lane Myers’ videos had negatively affected not just the victim, Shannon Walker, but also the Tucson City Prosecutor’s Office and the University of Arizona law school.
“You’re ... throwing a monkey wrench into the wheels of justice. That’s why this is such a serious case,” Metcalf said at the Oct. 6 sentencing hearing.
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Myers, 43, told the judge he would continue to speak out about his case, even from prison.
Myers was convicted in July 2025 of felony charges of stalking and harassing Shannon Walker. He set his sights on her after her husband, Tucson city prosecutor Matthew Walker, was involved in prosecuting two cases against Myers dating back to 2024.
As part of his plea, Myers agreed to probation conditions that limited what he could broadcast to YouTube. He remained silent about his case for about 10 months but began posting again this past summer.
Metcalf said Myers’ activity wasn’t just harassment of Walker but also retaliation against her husband for doing his job as a prosecutor, which affects the “rule of law” and harms the justice system.
In one video, Myers displayed a meme that included the text “Shannon Walker” and showed pictures of an Australian rugby player named Shannon Walker and an astronaut named Shannon Walker standing on top of a woman with Pima County Attorney Laura Conover’s face superimposed on it. The rugby player’s shirt was edited to say “Lane’s lying, legal losers.” In the corner, Myers’ face was photoshopped on a miniature figure with an enlarged penis, pointing toward Conover.
Ramifications of the dispute between Myers and the Walkers have extended beyond the harassment and stalking case.
Last January, Matthew Walker petitioned the Arizona Supreme Court to clamp down on YouTubers recording in courtrooms without permission. The high court is slated to consider tightening those rules in December.
Challenge to constitutionality of Arizona law planned
Pima County Deputy Attorney Rachel Stiles asked for 1.5 years in prison for Myers followed by two years of probation, but Metcalf said he did not believe Myers could comply with probation and instead opted for three years in prison.
Myers’ total time in prison likely will work out to about a year and nine months because of the time he’s already served in jail, according to his attorney Mark Resnick.
Resnick said he was “disappointed but not surprised” at the ruling, and stressed that all of Myers' activity post-probation was pure speech. He said ambiguity in the probation conditions left Myers with the choice to either stay quiet and remain safe or speak and wait to see if he got in trouble.
“That’s just not how a free society works,” Resnick said. He told Metcalf that Myers should have every right to talk about his case, his victim and the ways he thinks he was wronged by the criminal justice system.
At the sentencing hearing, Myers said he had tried to comply with the probation and spent months speaking with legal experts to understand the boundaries of what he could and couldn’t say. He argued his circumstance was difficult to navigate because his conditions limited what he could say but didn’t outright ban him from speaking about his case.
He believed his videos complied with the conditions, he said, but he also thought that if they didn’t, the probation officers would have warned him, he said.
First Amendment experts who spoke with The Republic raised questions about whether the conditions went too far in restricting the Myers’ free-speech rights and effectively created a gag order. However, they also acknowledged that courts regularly uphold conditions for felons that they wouldn't for other civilians.
Resnick told the judge he plans to appeal the case and challenge the constitutionality of Arizona’s anti-harassment law on free-speech grounds.
That law may already be on shaky grounds.
In May, Arizona Supreme Court Chief Justice Ann Timmer said the law might “implicate the free-speech protections of our state and federal Constitutions” because it didn’t give breathing room for conduct or communication that may have been harassing yet also made for a “legitimate purpose.”
The lack of such exemption could mean speech that qualifies as harassment under the law may actually be protected by the Arizona and federal constitutions.
Victim calls YouTuber a grifter
In Myers’ case, Resnick has said his client made videos to show that the Walkers, in his view, were “using their positions as government employees and being members of the Bar to gain advantages that other people wouldn't have, which is newsworthy.”
Myers has also sought to draw attention to the cases Matthew Walker prosecuted against him — cases that he has described as infringements on his First Amendment rights and government overreach.
That a judge already found Myers harassed Shannon Walker under another anti-harassment law that does take into consideration speech made for a “legitimate purpose,” however, could pose a hurdle.
Matthew and Shannon Walker declined to comment after the sentencing.
During the hearing, Shannon Walker told the judge, “Lane Myers is a grifter who uses the First Amendment as an excuse for harassment and stalking, and then sells his followers a story in which holding him accountable somehow makes him the victim.”
She said she had lived with the consequences of Myers’ decisions “long enough” and stressed that she believed he was dangerous.
“Lane has crossed boundary after boundary. Arrest, jail, felony convictions, court orders, probation restrictions — none of it has made him stop,” she said. “So, after ignoring all of these other boundaries, what possible basis do I have for believing physical violence is the one line Lane would never cross?”
Myers, who’s currently detained at the Pima County jail, should be transferred to the Arizona Department of Corrections within the next few weeks.
The Walkers’ wishes for him to leave them alone appear unlikely.
At the hearing, Myers told the judge he would immediately start taking calls and interviews to discuss his case if he were sentenced to prison.
Joshua Gray, a friend of Myers who broadcasts about the case on his YouTube channel and whom Myers was previously banned from speaking to, was already recording a call with Myers a few hours after sentencing.
Without his probation conditions in effect, Myers is technically freer to speak about his case than he was previously. Even from prison, he doesn’t plan to quiet down.
