Back in October I published a post that poo-poo’d the idea that the local powers that be in Fannin County would be vindictive against those who criticize them. I may have spoken too soon. A recent incident involving the publisher of a local paper and the chief judge of the Superior Court has attracted quite a bit of media attention and started to make me rethink whether Fannin County is safe for civilized people.
Here’s the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s version of the story:
Torpy at Large: Pushy journalist makes
news when judge pushes back
By Bill Torpy (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
If Mark Thomason is an identity fraud artist, he’s a bad one.
Thomason and his lawyer, Russell Stookey, were arrested in Blue Ridge in North Georgia on charges of identity fraud and making false statements. Thomason is a known troublemaker — he publishes the Fannin Focus, one of the county’s three newspapers. That’s right, Fannin County, population 22,000, has three (3!) print newspapers AND a news blog.
The felony charges against Thomason go back to a year-old fight he’s waged with the local Powers That Be, one that started with a prosecutor and a judge casually tossing around a racial slur in open court. What got the publisher tossed in the pokey last month was his insistence to get his hands on bank records to show Superior Court Judge Brenda Weaver (who is not the judge in the racial slur episode) used public funds to pay a court reporter when she shouldn’t have.
Thomason first tried using the Open Records Act to come up with documentation. When that didn’t work, he got inventive and used a subpoena from ongoing litigation to demand the records from a bank.
Whoops! Thomason soon found himself stopped by police on a highway, handcuffed, strip-searched not once, but twice, forced to sleep overnight on a concrete jailhouse floor, and then tested for drugs not once, but twice, since his release.
The story has gone national, with First Amendment and newspaper groups saying his treatment represents an attack on Freedom of the Press. It’s David getting ‘cuffed by Goliath.
Thomason, who started his newspaper two years ago, is bemused. “If anyone wanted to commit ID fraud, the last thing they’d want to do is to file public records discussing it,” he said.
It seems Judge Weaver has gotten her robes all bunched up because Thomason is pesky and aggressive and has bothered the heck out of her and other local officials.
Weaver told the AJC’s Rhonda Cook she resented Thomason’s continuing attacks in his weekly newspaper and what he was saying around town.
“I don’t react well when my honesty is questioned,” said Weaver, who called the questioning of her spending a “vendetta.”
If Thomason was twisting the process by using a subpoena to get the bank records, it seems an odd way to access the judge’s operating account to, say, buy stuff on Amazon. No, his intention was to write about how the judge used taxpayer dollars.
It all started last year when a prosecutor casually mentioned a racial slur as the nickname of a witness in a case before Appalachian Judicial Circuit Superior Court Judge Roger Bradley, who was Weaver’s colleague. Someone called Thomason about it and he started digging.
Thomason got a copy of the transcript, but it did not include other people (like two Fannin sheriff’s deputies) who used the slur, as he had been told by people in the courtroom.
The publisher demanded court reporter Rhonda Stubblefield turn over a tape recording of the proceedings. She wouldn’t. He sued her to get it. She slapped him with a $1.6 million defamation lawsuit.
Ultimately, yet another judge ruled the court reporter didn’t have to turn over the tape and Stubblefield dropped her defamation suit. But late last year, Judge Weaver stepped in and approved paying the court reporter $16,000 to cover her legal expenses, even though emails show at least one Fannin County administrator was uncomfortable with public money being spent to aide a private individual.
Weaver said she didn’t want the court reporter to be out all that money in attorney’s fees. And you certainly wouldn’t want an attorney to go unpaid. The court reporter’s attorney, Mary Beth Priest, is now a judge alongside Weaver.
Things get cozy in small towns like Blue Ridge.
For instance, the prosecutor who brought up the fraud charges against the newspaperman is District Attorney Alison Sosebee. When she got out of law school, she got a job as a law clerk — for Judge Weaver. And when she got her first lawyer job, it was with the firm of veteran attorney George Weaver, the judge’s husband.
Judges using the criminal justice system to settle a score or shut someone up could run afoul of the state’s Judicial Qualifications Commission, which investigates wrongdoing. (In fact, Bradley, the judge in the racial slur case that started all this, resigned this year as the JQC investigated him.)
A JQC spokesman said he couldn’t comment on the situation.
Incidentally, Judge Weaver is the JQC’s board chairman. Georgia’s legal community is, in essence, a small town.
And in Blue Ridge, the newspaper and its publisher are the talk of the town. Thomason’s divorce record and failure to pay child support have surfaced.
And there’s a deep divide on what people think.
Take Sheriff Dane Kirby, who took the publisher into custody: “I do not have a lot of confidence that what is printed in the Fannin Focus will be the truth.”
Or Blue Ridge Police Chief Johnny Scearce, who has played softball with Thomason: “He’s done my department fair. In two years, his paper has grown pretty popular. He’s pretty aggressive. He’s more detailed. He goes after it.”
And now they’re going after him.
Even the Drudge Report covered the story:
A North Georgia newspaper publisher was indicted on a felony charge and jailed overnight last week – for filing an open-records request.
Fannin Focus publisher Mark Thomason, along with his attorney Russell Stookey, were arrested on Friday and charged with attempted identity fraud and identity fraud. Thomason was also accused of making a false statement in his records request.
Thomason’s relentless pursuit of public records relating to the local Superior Court has incensed the court’s chief judge, Brenda Weaver, who also chairs the state Judicial Qualifications Commission. Weaver took the matter to the district attorney, who obtained the indictments.
Thomason was charged June 24 with making a false statement in an open-records request in which he asked for copies of checks “cashed illegally.” Thomason and Stookey were also charged with identity fraud and attempted identity fraud because they did not get Weaver’s approval before sending subpoenas to banks where Weaver and another judge maintained accounts for office expenses. Weaver suggested that Thomason may have been trying to steal banking information on the checks.
But Thomason said he was “doing his job” when he asked for records.
“I was astounded, in disbelief that there were even any charges to be had,” said Thomason, 37, who grew up in Fannin County. “I take this as a punch at journalists across the nation that if we continue to do our jobs correctly, then we have to live in fear of being imprisoned.”
Thomason and Stookey are out on $1,000 bond and have a long list of things they cannot do or things they must do to avoid going to jail until their trials. On Thursday, for example, Thomason reported to a pretrial center and was told that he may have to submit to a random drug test – a condition of the bond on which he was released from jail last Saturday.
Alison Sosebee, district attorney in the three counties in the Appalachian Judicial Circuit, and Judge Weaver say the charges are justified. Weaver said she resented Thomason’s attacks on her character in his weekly newspaper and in conversations with her constituents.
“I don’t react well when my honesty is questioned,” Weaver said.
She said others in the community were using Thomason to get at her. “It’s clear this is a personal vendetta against me,” she said. “I don’t know how else to explain that.”
But legal experts expressed dismay at the punitive use of the Open Records Act.
“To the extent these criminal charges stem from the use of the Open Records Act undermines the entire purpose of the law,” said Hollie Manheimer, executive director of the Georgia First Amendment Foundation. “The Open Records Act is the vehicle by which citizens access governmental information… Retaliation for use of the Open Records Act will inhibit every citizen from using it, and reel us back into the dark ages.”
Another expert said the charges against attorney Russell Stookey may also be unfounded. Robert Rubin, president of the Georgia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said it was wrong for the grand jury to indict a lawyer who “is using the legitimate court process for a subpoena to get records relevant for his case.”
It began with a racial slur in court
The dispute grows out of a March 2015 incident involving another judge who is no longer on the bench. Judge Roger Bradley was presiding over several cases and asked the name of the next defendant. The assistant district attorney announced next up was “(Racial slur) Ray.” Bradley, who resigned earlier this year, repeated the slur and also talked about another man whose street name started with the same slur.
Thomason asked for the transcript after he was told courtroom deputies also used the slur.
But the transcript only noted that Bradley and the assistant district attorney used the word.
According to Thomason, the court reporter told him that it was “off the record” when others in the courtroom spoke the word so it would not be recorded in the transcript. He asked to listen to the audio recording, but his request was rejected.
In an article Thomason quoted the court reporter as saying the slur was not taken down each time it was used.
And then Thomason asked Stookey to file paperwork with the court to force the the stenographer, Rhonda Stubblefield, to release the recording.
Stubblefield responded with a $1.6 million counterclaim against Thomason, accusing him of defaming her in stories that said the transcript she produced may not be accurate. Two months later a visiting judge closed Thomason’s case, concluding that Thomason had not produced evidence the transcript was inaccurate.
Last April, Stubblefield dropped her counterclaim because, her lawyer wrote, it was unlikely Thomason could pay the award if she won.
The next month, however, Stubblefield filed paper work to recoup attorney’s fees even though last last year she was cut a check for almost $16,000 from then-Judge Bradley’s operating account.
“She was being accused of all this stuff. She was very distressed. She had done absolutely nothing wrong,” Weaver said of the judges’ decision to use court money to cover Stubblefield’s legal expenses. “She was tormented all these months and then had to pay attorneys’ fees. And the only reason she was sued was she was doing what the court policy was.”
Stubblefield’s lawyer, Herman Clark, said in court Stubblefield was asking for the money from Thomason or his attorney so she could replace the funds taken out of the court bank account. Clark said it was unfair to expect taxpayers to pick up the cost.
To fight Stubblefield’s claim for legal fees, Stookey filed subpoenas for copies of certain checks so he could show her attorneys had already been paid. One of those two accounts listed in a subpoena had Weaver’s name on it as well as the Appalachian Judicial Circuit.
Weaver said the identify fraud allegations came out of her concern that Thomason would use the banking information on those checks for himself.
“I have absolutely no interest in further misappropriating any government monies,” Thomason said. “My sole goal was to show that legal fees were paid from a publicly funded account.”
At this point I should let you know that I occasionally write a column for the Fannin Focus.
The latest news is that the District Attorney, Sosebee, is dismissing the charges against Thomason and Stookey:
An attorney for the publisher of a North Georgia newspaper said she will ask to expunge his arrest and seal felony charges against him after the district attorney who secured the indictment moved Thursday to dismiss the case.
Ashleigh Merchant—who with husband, John, is representing publisher Mark Thomason pro bono—said Thursday that she was ‘shocked” and “very happy” by Appalachian Circuit District Attorney Alison Sosebee’s surprise decision to ask that felony charges against Thomason and Hiawassee attorney Russell Stookey be dismissed. The charges stemmed from efforts by the two men to obtain bank records for the county operating account of the circuit’s chief superior court judge, Brenda Weaver. Thomason is the publisher of the Fannin Focus.
“I think they were under pressure from the media and public scrutiny,” Merchant said. “There has been a large public outcry.” But Merchant cautioned that Sosebee could still object to sealing the indictment or expunging Thomason’s arrest. “And even if you get it expunged,” she said, “it’s never really gone.”
Thomason agreed with Merchant’s assessment. The publisher was arrested June 24 after he was pulled over by the county sheriff on the town’s main highway. He secured his release with a $10,000 bond. His bond conditions also barred him and his reporting staff from the county courthouse because the alleged crime victim was a sitting Superior Court judge.
"Unfortunately, a dismissal does not counteract the harm or the experience that Mr. Stookey and myself have had to live through,” he said. “I feel like, from this point forward, Mr. Stookey will always be known as the lawyer who committed fraud, and I am the journalist who was arrested.”
Merchant also vowed that once the charges are formally dismissed and the case is closed, she intends to file public records requests to discover “what communication there was between the DA and the courts and the county commissioner’s office” on the matter. Right now, those records are exempt from the state’s open records laws because the investigation has not concluded. “Mark wants some answers,” she said. “I think the public wants to know how this happened.”
Stookey could not be reached for comment.
Sosebee filed the motion to dismiss just two weeks after a Pickens County grand jury charged Thomason and Stookey with identity fraud, attempted identity fraud and making a false statement to a public official.
Richard Winegarden, a senior superior court judge who was assigned the case after Weaver and her two colleagues on the Appalachian Circuit recused, will have to sign off on Sosebee’s motion to dismiss the charges.
Until he does, Sosebee—who once served as Weaver’s law clerk and who was a law partner of Weaver’s husband until she was elected district attorney—said it would be inappropriate for her to comment.
Even the Drudge Report covered the story:
'Retaliation for use of the Open Records Act
will inhibit every citizen from using it.'
Fannin Focus publisher Mark Thomason, along with his attorney Russell Stookey, were arrested on Friday and charged with attempted identity fraud and identity fraud. Thomason was also accused of making a false statement in his records request.
Thomason’s relentless pursuit of public records relating to the local Superior Court has incensed the court’s chief judge, Brenda Weaver, who also chairs the state Judicial Qualifications Commission. Weaver took the matter to the district attorney, who obtained the indictments.
Thomason was charged June 24 with making a false statement in an open-records request in which he asked for copies of checks “cashed illegally.” Thomason and Stookey were also charged with identity fraud and attempted identity fraud because they did not get Weaver’s approval before sending subpoenas to banks where Weaver and another judge maintained accounts for office expenses. Weaver suggested that Thomason may have been trying to steal banking information on the checks.
But Thomason said he was “doing his job” when he asked for records.
“I was astounded, in disbelief that there were even any charges to be had,” said Thomason, 37, who grew up in Fannin County. “I take this as a punch at journalists across the nation that if we continue to do our jobs correctly, then we have to live in fear of being imprisoned.”
Thomason and Stookey are out on $1,000 bond and have a long list of things they cannot do or things they must do to avoid going to jail until their trials. On Thursday, for example, Thomason reported to a pretrial center and was told that he may have to submit to a random drug test – a condition of the bond on which he was released from jail last Saturday.
Alison Sosebee, district attorney in the three counties in the Appalachian Judicial Circuit, and Judge Weaver say the charges are justified. Weaver said she resented Thomason’s attacks on her character in his weekly newspaper and in conversations with her constituents.
“I don’t react well when my honesty is questioned,” Weaver said.
She said others in the community were using Thomason to get at her. “It’s clear this is a personal vendetta against me,” she said. “I don’t know how else to explain that.”
But legal experts expressed dismay at the punitive use of the Open Records Act.
“To the extent these criminal charges stem from the use of the Open Records Act undermines the entire purpose of the law,” said Hollie Manheimer, executive director of the Georgia First Amendment Foundation. “The Open Records Act is the vehicle by which citizens access governmental information… Retaliation for use of the Open Records Act will inhibit every citizen from using it, and reel us back into the dark ages.”
Another expert said the charges against attorney Russell Stookey may also be unfounded. Robert Rubin, president of the Georgia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said it was wrong for the grand jury to indict a lawyer who “is using the legitimate court process for a subpoena to get records relevant for his case.”
It began with a racial slur in court
The dispute grows out of a March 2015 incident involving another judge who is no longer on the bench. Judge Roger Bradley was presiding over several cases and asked the name of the next defendant. The assistant district attorney announced next up was “(Racial slur) Ray.” Bradley, who resigned earlier this year, repeated the slur and also talked about another man whose street name started with the same slur.
Thomason asked for the transcript after he was told courtroom deputies also used the slur.
But the transcript only noted that Bradley and the assistant district attorney used the word.
According to Thomason, the court reporter told him that it was “off the record” when others in the courtroom spoke the word so it would not be recorded in the transcript. He asked to listen to the audio recording, but his request was rejected.
In an article Thomason quoted the court reporter as saying the slur was not taken down each time it was used.
And then Thomason asked Stookey to file paperwork with the court to force the the stenographer, Rhonda Stubblefield, to release the recording.
Stubblefield responded with a $1.6 million counterclaim against Thomason, accusing him of defaming her in stories that said the transcript she produced may not be accurate. Two months later a visiting judge closed Thomason’s case, concluding that Thomason had not produced evidence the transcript was inaccurate.
Last April, Stubblefield dropped her counterclaim because, her lawyer wrote, it was unlikely Thomason could pay the award if she won.
The next month, however, Stubblefield filed paper work to recoup attorney’s fees even though last last year she was cut a check for almost $16,000 from then-Judge Bradley’s operating account.
“She was being accused of all this stuff. She was very distressed. She had done absolutely nothing wrong,” Weaver said of the judges’ decision to use court money to cover Stubblefield’s legal expenses. “She was tormented all these months and then had to pay attorneys’ fees. And the only reason she was sued was she was doing what the court policy was.”
Stubblefield’s lawyer, Herman Clark, said in court Stubblefield was asking for the money from Thomason or his attorney so she could replace the funds taken out of the court bank account. Clark said it was unfair to expect taxpayers to pick up the cost.
To fight Stubblefield’s claim for legal fees, Stookey filed subpoenas for copies of certain checks so he could show her attorneys had already been paid. One of those two accounts listed in a subpoena had Weaver’s name on it as well as the Appalachian Judicial Circuit.
Weaver said the identify fraud allegations came out of her concern that Thomason would use the banking information on those checks for himself.
“I have absolutely no interest in further misappropriating any government monies,” Thomason said. “My sole goal was to show that legal fees were paid from a publicly funded account.”
At this point I should let you know that I occasionally write a column for the Fannin Focus.
The latest news is that the District Attorney, Sosebee, is dismissing the charges against Thomason and Stookey:
District Attorney Asks to Dismiss
Indictment Against Publisher and Attorney
By R. Robin McDonald (Law.com)
An attorney for the publisher of a North Georgia newspaper said she will ask to expunge his arrest and seal felony charges against him after the district attorney who secured the indictment moved Thursday to dismiss the case.
Ashleigh Merchant—who with husband, John, is representing publisher Mark Thomason pro bono—said Thursday that she was ‘shocked” and “very happy” by Appalachian Circuit District Attorney Alison Sosebee’s surprise decision to ask that felony charges against Thomason and Hiawassee attorney Russell Stookey be dismissed. The charges stemmed from efforts by the two men to obtain bank records for the county operating account of the circuit’s chief superior court judge, Brenda Weaver. Thomason is the publisher of the Fannin Focus.
“I think they were under pressure from the media and public scrutiny,” Merchant said. “There has been a large public outcry.” But Merchant cautioned that Sosebee could still object to sealing the indictment or expunging Thomason’s arrest. “And even if you get it expunged,” she said, “it’s never really gone.”
Thomason agreed with Merchant’s assessment. The publisher was arrested June 24 after he was pulled over by the county sheriff on the town’s main highway. He secured his release with a $10,000 bond. His bond conditions also barred him and his reporting staff from the county courthouse because the alleged crime victim was a sitting Superior Court judge.
"Unfortunately, a dismissal does not counteract the harm or the experience that Mr. Stookey and myself have had to live through,” he said. “I feel like, from this point forward, Mr. Stookey will always be known as the lawyer who committed fraud, and I am the journalist who was arrested.”
Merchant also vowed that once the charges are formally dismissed and the case is closed, she intends to file public records requests to discover “what communication there was between the DA and the courts and the county commissioner’s office” on the matter. Right now, those records are exempt from the state’s open records laws because the investigation has not concluded. “Mark wants some answers,” she said. “I think the public wants to know how this happened.”
Stookey could not be reached for comment.
Sosebee filed the motion to dismiss just two weeks after a Pickens County grand jury charged Thomason and Stookey with identity fraud, attempted identity fraud and making a false statement to a public official.
Richard Winegarden, a senior superior court judge who was assigned the case after Weaver and her two colleagues on the Appalachian Circuit recused, will have to sign off on Sosebee’s motion to dismiss the charges.
Until he does, Sosebee—who once served as Weaver’s law clerk and who was a law partner of Weaver’s husband until she was elected district attorney—said it would be inappropriate for her to comment.
Obviously I'm very disappointed that something like this could happen in my adopted home. I feel like the guy in the new suit who has just been crapped on by a large bird.
I guess it shows you that no place is free from abuses of power. It was so bush league of Weaver and Sosebee to think that their actions would go unnoticed and they could get away with something like this. I suppose that's the problem with the insularity of rural and small town life--you tend to forget there's a wider world out there. Hey guys, when are you going to realize that you're not in Kansas anymore?
Thank you, thank you for posting on this issue.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting, indeed!
ReplyDeleteIt's our 15 minutes of fame!
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteSadly, more like 15 minutes of shame.
Delete