About
Gary L. Stuart
August 2021
I earned degrees in business and law at the University of Arizona, graduated in the top ten-percent of my class, edited the Arizona Law Review, and practiced law for 32 years with one of Arizona’s largest law firms (Jennings, Strouss, & Salmon & Trask). Now, I blend a part-time law practice with teaching law and writing at Arizona State University. The Maricopa County Bar inducted me into its Hall of Fame in 2010. I've written many law review articles, appellate briefs, trial motions, legal opinions, ethics opinions, and hundreds of blogs, CLE Publications, essays, op-ed pieces, rants, short stories, and eighteen books.
(1) “The Ethical Trial Lawyer,” Textbook. State Bar of Arizona, 1994. ISBN 0-88726-028-4.
(2) “Ethical Litigation,” Lexis-Nexis Online Publishing, 1998.
(3) “The Gallup 14,” Historical fiction, University of New Mexico Press, 2000. ISBN 0-8263-2113.
(4) “Miranda—The Story of America’s Right to Remain Silent,” Nonfiction. University of Arizona Press, 2004. ISBN 0-8165-2313-4.
(5) “AIM For The Mayor,” Historical fiction, Xlibris Press, 2008. ISBN 9878-1-4363-5095-2.
(6) “Innocent Until Interrogated—The True Story of The Buddhist Temple Massacre And the Tucson Four,” Nonfiction. University of Arizona Press, 2010. ISBN 978-0-8165-2924-7.
(7) “Angus Riding the Rio Chama, a novel, 2014.
(8) “Ten Shoes Up,” a novel, Gleason &Wall Publishing, 2015. ISBN 978-0-9863441-0-7.
(9) “The Valles Caldera” a novel. Gleason & Wall Publishing, 2016. ISBN 978-0-9863441-2-1.
(10) “Anatomy of a Confession—The Debra Milke Case,” American Bar Association Publishing, 2016. ISBN 978-1-63425-273-7.
(11) “The Last Stage To Bosque Redondo,” a novel, Gleason & Wall Publishing, 2017. ISBN 978-0-9863441-4-5.
(12) “Let’s Disappear,” a novel, Gleason & Wall Publishing, 2018. ISBN 978-0-9863441-6-9.
(13) “CALL HIM MAC—Ernest W. McFarland—The Arizona Years,” a biography, University of Arizona Press, 2018. ISBN 13-978-1-94145-06-9.
(14) “Emergence,” a novel, Gleason & Wall Publishing, 2019. ISBN 978-0-9863441-8-3.
(15) “Tracking Tom Horn’s Confession,” a novel. Gleason & Wall Publishing, 2021. ISBN 978-1-736-68946-0-6.
(16) “Shared Memories,” a novel. Gleason & Wall Publishing, 2021. ISBN 978-1-736946-2-0.
(17) “Nobody Did Anything Wrong But Me—The Northern Arizona University Mass Shooting Case,” Nonfiction, 2021. ISBN Pending. ISBN 978-1-946074-_-_.
(18) “The Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University—1965 to 2020,” Nonfiction, 2021. ISBN 978-1-7368946-4-4.
Featured Work
"Nobody Did Anything Wrong But Me--The Second Amendment and the Horrific Consequences of 'Stand Your Ground" in Public Spaces--The Story of the Northern Arizona University Mass Shooting, October 9, 2015"
On October 9, 2015 NAU suffered its first and only mass shooting on campus in its 116-year history. When the first NAU Police car skidded into the parking lot that night, an eighteen-year old freshman, Steven Jones, in tears and shaking said, “I’m the shooter.” Once disarmed, cuffed, and lodged in the back seat of the patrol vehicle, they asked him if anyone else in the crowd had a gun. He said, “Nobody did anything wrong, but me.”
A few minutes before his arrest, he and two fraternity friends were involved in altercation with a different group of fraternity students. Some were drunk. Most had been drinking. A student Jones did not know sucker-punched him. He ran one hundred and fifty feet away from that punch, reaching his parked car and safety. He took his 40-caliber Glock semi-automatic from the glove box. After attaching his tactical light to the barrel, he chambered a round, and walked ninety-five feet back to the end of the parking lot, where the two fraternity groups had faced off.
His gun had a tactical light, giving him the ability to shoot in the dark. He had a "competition extender," expanding his magazine capacity. He loaded seventeen "hollow point" bullets. If he ran out, he had sixty additional rounds in the trunk. His social skills were limited because he’d been home schooled for eleven years. But his shooting skills were top-grade. His father, a NRA shooting instructor turned his son into an accomplished shooter. He was now ready to become a man on a college campus.
4. Jones didn’t practice with traditional bulls-eye square targets; he used man-size human figures so he could shoot “center mass.” After activating the tactical light on the Glock, which blinded both student groups, he fired ten rounds of hollow point ammunition in “the area of” the unarmed students. At least seven of these rounds struck four students involved in the earlier chest bumping and sucker punching. One student died, and three others sustained significant lifetime injuries.
My book is narrative nonfiction, encompassing the shooting, arrest, investigation, trial and ultimate conviction of Jones and resolving the civil case against him, his family, and their gun company. It details the local consequences of the first and only mass shooting at NAU. And it defines America’s national epidemic of gun violence, especially on American campuses. The narrative back-story is how America’s gun culture harms victims, families, the criminal justice system, and the rule of law.
