A stack of Marion County Record newspapers sits behind the newspaper building, waiting to be disassembled, sorted and distributed, Aug. 16, 2023, in Marion, Kan. Two special prosecutors said Monday that they plan to file criminal obstruction of justice charges against a former central Kansas police chief over his conduct following a raid on his town’s newspaper last year, and that the newspaper’s employees did not commit any crimes.
John Hanna/AP
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John Hanna/AP
TOPEKA, Kan. — Two special prosecutors said Monday they plan to charge a former central Kansas police chief with obstruction of justice for his conduct after a police raid last year in the local weekly newspaper.
Prosecutors Marc Bennett and Barry Wilkerson concluded in their 124-page report that employees at the Marion County Record did not commit any crimes before former Marion Sheriff Gideon Cody led a raid on the publisher’s offices and home. They said a judge-signed police warrant authorizing the search contained inaccurate information from an “incomplete investigation” and that the searches were not legally justified.
Body camera footage from a 2023 police raid on publisher Eric Meyer’s home shows his 98-year-old mother, Joan Meyer, visibly angry and telling police, “Get out of my house!” She was a co-owner of the newspaper, lived with her son, and died of a heart attack the following afternoon.
Prosecutors found no evidence that the officers “believed they were endangering Ms. Meyer’s life,” but they accused Cody of obstructing an official judicial process in the weeks after the raid. He resigned as police chief last October. It is unclear whether officials plan to charge him with a felony or misdemeanor, and both are possible. As of Monday, the criminal complaint had not been filed.
“Small-town familiarity may explain but does not excuse the inadequate investigation that led to the search warrant application in this matter,” prosecutors said in their report.
Bennett is the district attorney in Sedgwick County, home to the state’s largest city, Wichita; and Wilkerson is the chief prosecutor in Riley County in northeastern Kansas. The state attorney general appointed them after the Marion County prosecutor — who faced questions about the search warrant — said he had a conflict of interest.
The raid caused a national debate on press freedom focuses on Marion, a town of about 1,900 people nestled among rolling prairie hills about 150 miles (241 km) southwest of Kansas City, Missouri.
Seth Stern, director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said in a statement that Cody faces charges other than obstruction of justice.
“The raid itself was criminal,” he said. “And Cody is not the only one at fault here.”
Meyer said in an interview that he was grateful that prosecutors had cleared the newspaper employee of any wrongdoing, though he questioned why it took them a year. He also expressed frustration that Cody was the only employee expected to face criminal charges.
“What I feel is going on here is he’s being made a scapegoat,” Meyer said.
The newspaper’s parent company, Meyer and three current or former employees have filed a federal lawsuit against the city of Marion and current and former local officials, including Cody.
A voicemail seeking comment was left at a cellphone number believed to belong to Cody. It was unclear who might represent him in the potential criminal case, and his attorneys in multiple federal lawsuits over the raid did not return phone messages.
The search warrant that allowed police to raid charged Meyer and reporter Phyllis Zorn with identity theft and other computer crimes when they accessed the driving record of a local business owner who was applying for a liquor license. Zorn ran the records through a state database available online. Prosecutors said Cody apparently thought — incorrectly — that Zorn had to impersonate the business owner to gain access.
The business owner provided police with a written statement two days before the raid, but prosecutors said two pages of the statement were missing from the document turned over to their investigators in September 2023.
The prosecutor’s report also includes text messages between Cody and the business owner after the raid. The business owner said Cody asked her to delete the text messages between them, fearing people might misinterpret their relationship, which she considered professional and innocent.
Information about the messages will be included in the criminal complaint, the report said.
