High court declines to hear appeal of Richard Jewell lawsuit

ATLANTA - The Georgia Supreme Court has declined to consider the appeal of Richard Jewell in the former Centennial Olympic Park security guard&#39;s libel lawsuit against The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. <br> <br> The court decided 6-1 Monday against hearing the case, in which Jewell challenges a lower court&#39;s ruling that he was a public figure when he was publicly identified as a suspect in the 1996 bombing at the park. <br> <br> In October, the Court of Appeals, one rung lower than the state Supreme Court in the appeals process, upheld that ruling but also threw out a State Court judge&#39;s order that reporters for the newspaper must identify their sources of information about Jewell. The Supreme Court upheld that Court of Appeals decision also. <br> <br> ``The quest for justice for Richard Jewell now will move to the U.S. Supreme Court, and hopefully he will achieve justice there,&#39;&#39; Jewell&#39;s lawyer, Lin Wood, said after Monday&#39;s ruling. <br> <br> The newspaper&#39;s lawyer, Peter Canfield, said the high court ``recognized that the Court of Appeals correctly applied the law in this case.&#39;&#39; <br> <br> Jewell was considered a hero after spotting the backpack that held the bomb that exploded early July 27, 1996, killing one woman and injuring 111 people during the Atlanta Olympics. <br> <br> Three days later, the newspaper reported that Jewell was the focus of the investigation, leading to international media scrutiny of the security guard. He was cleared by the FBI three months later. <br> <br> In the lawsuit filed in January 1997, Jewell claimed Journal-Constitution articles portrayed him as a strange person who was probably guilty of setting off the bomb. <br> <br> In 1999, State Court Judge John Mather ruled that two of the newspaper&#39;s reporters would have to reveal confidential law-enforcement sources. <br> <br> Mather also said Jewell was a public person because he had been interviewed by the media about his hero&#39;s role. That finding raised Jewell&#39;s legal burden because a public figure must show that a publication not only printed an inaccuracy but that it knew or suspected the information to be false.