A judge once ordered her jailed and banned from Facebook because she posted a critical comment about her ex-husband. But a Georgia woman is getting the last word. And an apology. And a big check.
Anne King was a single mom back in 2015 struggling to take care of two sick children. That night she posted on Facebook she was feeling overwhelmed.
“That moment when everyone in your house has the flu and you ask your kids' dad to get them (not me) more Motrin and Tylenol and he refuses," she wrote. Others offered comments of support and criticized her ex-husband who lived nearby.
“He didn’t want to get medicine for my children," King explained. "That’s all I said.”
Her ex-husband happened to be Washington County deputy sheriff Corey King. He brought Anne's Facebook post to the local magistrate judge. Judge Ralph Todd agreed Anne had committed the crime of “criminal defamation” because she had made “derogatory and degrading comments… for the purpose of provoking a breach of the peace.”
She would be handcuffed, marched to a patrol car outside the courthouse and spend the next five hours in the Washington County jail. Her ex-husband, she said, even came by to stare at her through the cell door. The charge was eventually dropped.
Judge Todd in 2017, insisted the criminal defamation law was constitutional and pointed us to the statute in his Georgia Law Enforcement Handbook. What he apparently failed to see was a notation on the same page. It said the criminal defamation law had been ruled unconstitutional in 1982.
This month, all sides settled. Anne King got a check for $100,000. And perhaps just as valuable: a written apology from her ex-husband and his law enforcement buddy who helped put her in jail. “We apologize for the pain caused and time wasted including Ms. King being charged and arrested with respect to what was really a personal dispute that should have ended without the involvement of the courts," it read.
“I felt small and helpless," Anne King told us. "And now I feel… I’m a giant now.”
