Three years after the chief judge of Georgia's Appalachian Judicial Circuit helped orchestrate the indictment of a local newspaper publisher and his attorney, a federal judge in Atlanta has thrown out a civil rights case accusing the judge of retaliatory prosecution.

Mark Thomason, publisher of now defunct Fannin Focus, and his lawyer, Hiawassee attorney Russell Stookey, filed the suit against Chief Superior Court Judge Brenda Weaver in 2018—two years after they were arrested on felony charges stemming from a separate public records fight. The court battle stemmed from Thomason's attempts to obtain a copy of an official recording of a local court hearing and, with Stookey's help, subpoena bank records of Weaver's county judicial operating account.

In dismissing the retaliatory prosecution claim, District Judge Steve Jones said in an order handed down Sept. 17, that his decision turned on a key question: whether Weaver induced the district attorney, who was her former law clerk, to bring charges against Thomason and Stookey that wouldn't have been initiated otherwise.