EDITORIAL: Pickens County indictment has chilling effect on free speech

There’s no way to avoid the issue that a recent event in the Appalachian Judicial Circuit in which a Fannin County newspaper publisher was indicted and arrested will have a chilling effect on Georgia’s Sunshine Laws if it stands.

And the heavy-handed response by Chief Judge Brenda Weaver of the circuit is likely to cause her more problems than solutions in what appears to be an ongoing confrontational relationship between the jurist and Mark Thomason, publisher of the Fannin Focus.

In an indictment handed down in Pickens County Superior Court late last month, Thomason and his attorney, Russell Stookey, were each charged with one count of identity fraud and one count of attempt to commit identity fraud. According to the indictment, the pair used Weaver’s identifying information without her consent or notification in a subpoena for production of evidence at a bank for financial information from her account.

In addition, Thomason was indicted on a count of making a false statement in connection with a June 13 Open Records Act request submitted to the chairman of the Pickens County Board of Commissioners seeking the “actual cleared checks (front/back)” that the county had written to Weaver and Judge Roger Bradley for quarterly operating account expenses in 2013-15. In the Open Records Act request, the indictment says, Thomason stated that a review of checks written in 2015 on behalf of Fannin County found “that, according to several banks, some of these checks appear to have not been deposited but cashed illegally.”

Whether ID fraud was intended, much less committed or attempted to be committed, seems a tenuous position, but the charge of making a false statement on the Open Records Act request is something that should not stand. Rather than making a statement of fact, Thomason was expressing an opinion, one that should not be subject to a criminal charge, regardless of how distasteful the judge, a public official, found it. Weaver was quoted by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution as saying, “I don’t react well when my honesty is questioned.” We agree on that point. Taking a swipe at the First Amendment and the Georgia Open Records Law is a poor reaction.

It is a reaction that has taken a local dispute, one Weaver has described as a vendetta against her, and given it statewide and possibly national attention. The Georgia chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists has filed a complaint with the state Judicial Qualifications Commission against Weaver over the matter, and the state SPJ has joined with the Georgia Press Association, Georgia First Amendment Foundation and Atlanta Press Club in demanding that the charges be dropped. Weaver, it should be noted, chairs the commission, and the SPJ has asked her to recuse herself from the matter, which she should do if she hasn’t already done so. The state Attorney General’s Office also has been asked to provide mediation services.

If Weaver’s goal was to protect her integrity and image, pushing for the district attorney to seek these indictments, particularly the false statement charge, failed to accomplish that. To the contrary, it gives the appearance of government attempting to quash the right to free speech, which includes the right to criticize public officials.

— The Albany Herald Editorial Board