Former Kansas police chief will face criminal charge after raid on newspaper, prosecutors say

(CNN) — The former police chief who led a raid last year on a small Kansas newspaper will be charged with interfering with the judicial process for actions he took after the raid, special prosecutors announced in a report Monday.

The charge against Gideon Cody will be filed in Marion County District Court, according to the 124-page report from Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett and Riley County Attorney Barry Wilkerson.

The report says the prosecutors found probable cause that Cody “committed the crime of obstruction of justice,” defined under Kansas law as “knowingly or intentionally” inducing a “witness or informant to withhold or unreasonably delay” the production of testimony, information or documents.

The prosecutors didn’t elaborate on the nature of the charge but said it was related to Cody’s text exchange with local restaurant owner Kari Newell after the raid.

Cody has not responded to CNN’s request for comment. He resigned from the Marion Police Department in the weeks after the raid.

The report explains what happened before, during and after police executed search warrants at The Marion County Record, the home of its publisher Eric Meyer and the home of a local city councilwoman in August 2023.

The raid drew condemnation from dozens of news organizations and press freedom advocates, including CNN, for its intrusiveness and First Amendment rights concerns.

At the time of the raids, the Marion County Sheriff’s office said it was investigating “identity theft” and “unlawful acts concerning computers” based on the belief that reporter Phyllis Zorn unlawfully obtained Newell’s driving records before the paper published a story about her.

But less than a week later, after national criticism of the raids, Marion County Prosecutor Joel Ensey withdrew the search warrants and asked authorities to return seized materials, saying “insufficient evidence exists to establish a legally sufficient nexus between this alleged crime and the places searched and the items seized.”

The report’s findings

In the report, the special prosecutors criticized the “inadequate investigation” that led to the raids and raised questions about the motivation behind them.

“The specter of ulterior motives, personal animus and conclusions based not on investigation but rather on assumptions permeates much of this case,” the report states.

Still, the prosecutors found that outside of Cody’s actions, there was “insufficient evidence” to establish crimes had been committed by any other law enforcement officers or civilians involved in the raids.

The evidence, prosecutors argued, “strongly suggests they (law enforcement officers) genuinely believed they were investigating criminal acts.”

The prosecutors also considered whether to charge the officers in connection with the death of the newspaper publisher’s mother the day after the raid.

Meyer lived with his 98-year-old mother, who co-owned the paper. He reported she’d been “very upset” about the actions of police, “especially in the service of the warrant at their personal residence.” But the coroner found her death was natural and prosecutors determined there was no evidence to demonstrate the officers “intended” to cause her death or “knew executing the warrant would cause her death.”

CNN reached out to the Marion County Sheriff’s Office for comment but has not heard back.

Newspaper editor believes ‘justice will be done’

Meyer offered a mixed reaction to Monday’s report.

“We are, of course, pleased that authorities finally have stated in public that we committed no wrongdoing,” he said in a statement emailed to CNN. “We have no idea why it took them almost a year to do this. Their report makes it clear that they arrived at this conclusion mere days after the raid. Yet they left us swinging in the wind. That’s disappointing, to say the least.

“We also are pleased that they believe, as we long have, that Gideon Cody violated state law. Unfortunately, others involved in the case — those who didn’t flee the state — seem to have escaped similar scrutiny.

“We understand that state criminal charges might not be possible against some of them. That’s why federal civil suits will continue, why there should be public outrage over some officials’ failure to perform even the most fundamental responsibilities of their positions, and why state laws allowing them to escape responsibility may need to be changed.”

There are five open federal lawsuits against Marion officials related to the raids, including one filed by Meyer and another filed by Zorn, the reporter, according to court records.

Zorn said in a statement the charge was “well deserved.”

“There have been times over the last year when I was worried because there were so many law enforcement officers lined up against me,” she said. “But I have faith that eventually justice will be done.”

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