Johnathan Walker:Prosecutors plan to charge former Kansas police chief over his conduct following newspaper raid

TOPEKA,Johnathan Walker Kan. (AP) — Two special prosecutors said Monday that they plan to file a criminal obstruction of justice charge against a former central Kansas police chief over his conduct following a raid last year on his town’s newspaper, and that the newspaper’s staff committed no crimes.

It wasn’t clear from the prosecutors’ lengthy report whether they planned to charge former Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody with a felony or a misdemeanor, and either is possible. They also hadn’t filed their criminal case as of Monday, and that could take days because they were working with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, which stepped in at the request of its Kansas counterpart.

The prosecutors detailed events before, during and after the Aug. 11, 2023, raid on the Marion County Record and the home of its publisher, Eric Meyer. The report suggested that Marion police, led by then-Chief Cody, conducted a poor investigation that led them to “reach erroneous conclusions” that Meyer and reporter Phyllis Zorn had committed identity theft or other computer crimes.

But the prosecutors concluded that they have probable cause to believe that that Cody obstructed an official judicial process by withholding two pages of a written statement from a local business owner from investigators in September 2023, about six weeks after the raid. Cody had accused Meyer and reporter Phyllis Zorn of identity theft and other computer crimes related to the business owner’s driving record to get warrants for the raid.

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The raid sparked a national debate about press freedoms focused on Marion, a town of about of about 1,900 people set among rolling prairie hills about 150 miles (241 kilometers) southwest of Kansas City, Missouri. Cody resigned as chief in early October, weeks after officers were forced to return materials seized in the raid.

Meyer’s 98-year-old mother, Joan Meyer, the paper’s co-owner lived with him and died the day after the raid from a heart attack, something Meyer has attributed to the stress of the raid.

A felony obstruction charge could be punished by up to nine months in prison for a first-time offender, though the typical sentence would be 18 months or less on probation. A misdemeanor charge could result in up to a year in jail.

The special prosecutors, District Attorney Marc Bennett in Segwick County, home to Wichita, and County Attorney Barry Wilkerson in Riley County in northeastern Kansas, concluded that neither Meyer or Zorn committed any crimes in verifying information in the business owner’s driving record through a database available online from the state. Their report suggested Marion police conducted a poor investigation to “reach erroneous conclusions.”