Charges dropped, but that’s not enough

Editorial update:

When Appalachian Circuit Chief Judge Brenda Weaver learned that a local journalist and his attorney had obtained subpoenas for bank records from her office’s account, both men were indicted and arrested on charges of false statements and identity theft. They were jailed overnight, and the journalist, Fannin Focus publisher Mark Thomason, was given three drug and alcohol tests before being released on bond the next day.

Weaver justified the indictments with the beyond bizarre argument that the men could use information obtained in the subpoena to withdraw money from the accounts. She also told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “I don’t react well when my honesty is questioned.”

Few of us do. But we’d expect a judge to react appropriately, and perhaps even in a manner that bears some relation to the Constitution.

On Thursday the Appalachian Circuit district attorney dropped the charges, with a letter from the judge attached to the dismissal saying she had second thoughts about the case.

The formal legal term for that, if memory serves, is “Duh.”

All’s well, as they say, that ends well — except for the outrageous overreach of the arrests in the first place, not to mention a night in jail and the added humiliation of multiple urine tests. This demands more than a “No harm, no foul” shrugging off.

Among the multiple curiosities of this case is the fact that Weaver is a member of the Judicial Qualifications Commission (a body which also includes Superior Court Judge John Allen of Columbus). Just two years ago, that panel accepted the Freedom of Information Award from the Georgia First Amendment Foundation.

After the arrests of Thomason and attorney Russell Stookey, complaints were lodged by several news and open government organizations, including the Society of Professional Journalists, the Georgia Press Association … and the Georgia First Amendment Foundation.

The SPJ has asked Attorney General Sam Olens to review Weaver’s bringing criminal charges in response to an open records quest. Whether that constitutes abuse of power in a legal sense is an official matter. As a matter of common sense, it meets every rational definition.

This story was originally published July 9, 2016 at 5:54 PM with the headline "Charges dropped, but that’s not enough."