A federal lawsuit filed Tuesday against the chief judge of Georgia’s Appalachian Judicial Circuit claims she pressured the district attorney to initiate “a baseless criminal prosecution” against a North Georgia journalist and his lawyer.
The suit was filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Gainesville by Mark Thomason, publisher of the now-defunct Fannin Focus, and Thomason’s Hiawassee lawyer, Russell Stookey. It contends that Judge Brenda Weaver and District Attorney Alison Sosebee “participated in a plan to initiate a criminal prosecution against Thomason and Stookey without regard to whether there was probable cause” to do so.
