TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A former Kansas police chief who led a raid last year on a weekly newspaper has been charged with felony obstruction of justice and is accused of persuading a potential witness to withhold information from authorities when they later investigated his conduct.
The single charge against former Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody alleges that he knowingly or intentionally influenced the witness to withhold information on the day of the raid of the Marion County Record and the home of its publisher or sometime within the following six days. The charge was filed Monday in state district court in Marion County and is not more specific about Cody’s alleged conduct.
The raid sparked a national debate about press freedom focused on Marion, a town of about 1,900 people set among rolling prairie hills about 150 miles (241 kilometers) southwest of Kansas City, Missouri. Also, newspaper Publisher Eric Meyer’s mother, who co-owned the newspaper and lived with him, died the next day of a heart attack, and he blames the stress of the raid.
Meyer said last week that authorities appear to be making Cody the “fall guy” for the raid when numerous officials were involved. He said Tuesday that he suspects the criminal case ultimately will be resolved through a plea bargain so that Cody will not have a trial that would more fully disclose details about the raid.
“We’re just being basic journalists here,” he said. “We want the whole story. We don’t want part of it.”
A report from two special prosecutors last week referenced text messages between Cody and a local business owner after the raid. The business owner has said that Cody asked her to delete text messages between them, fearing people could get the wrong idea about their relationship, which she said was professional and platonic.
The Associated Press left a message seeking comment at a possible cellphone number for Cody, and it was not immediately returned Tuesday. Attorneys representing Cody in a federal lawsuit over the raid are not representing him in the criminal case and did not immediately know who was representing him.
Cody justified the Aug. 11, 2023, raid by saying he had evidence that Meyer, the newspaper and one of its reporters, Phyllis Zorn, had committed identity theft or other computer crimes in verifying the authenticity of a copy of the business owner’s state driving record provided to the newspaper by an acquaintance. The business owner was seeking Marion City Council approval for a liquor license and the record showed that she potentially had driven without a valid license for years. However, she later had her license reinstated.
The prosecutors’ report concluded that no crime was committed by Meyer, Zorn, or the newspaper and that Cody reached an erroneous conclusion about their conduct because of a poor investigation. Zorn used the information she had to legally search an online state database using her own name.
The prosecutors also said police search warrants signed by a judge contained inaccurate information because of the “inadequate investigation” and were not legally justified. But the prosecutors said they couldn’t show that Cody had intentionally misled the judge.
The obstruction of justice charge against Cody was filed by one of the special prosecutors, Barry Wilkerson, the top prosecutor in Riley County in northeastern Kansas. The other special prosecutor is Marc Bennett, the district attorney in Sedgwick County, the home to the state’s largest city of Wichita.
A conviction for a first-time offender can be punished by up to nine months in prison, though under the state’s sentencing guidelines, the typical penalty is 18 months or less of probation.
The Record’s publishing company and current and former staffers have filed four federal lawsuits against Cody and other former and current local officials. The publishing company’s lawsuit includes a wrongful death claim and suggests total damages exceed $10 million. The city’s current annual budget is about $9.5 million.
The publishing company also filed an open records lawsuit last month in state district court, seeking to force the city to turn over texts between police and other local officials.
Police body-camera footage of the 2023 raid on the publisher’s home shows the publisher’s 98-year-old mother, Joan Meyer, visibly upset and telling officers, “Get out of my house!”
The prosecutors said they could not charge Cody or other officers involved in the raid over her death because there was no evidence they believed the raid posed a risk to her life.
The prosecutors also said there was no “gross deviation” from how officers served other search warrants in the past. However, Eric Meyer said seven officers came to the house for the search.
“A couple of weeks earlier, they conducted a raid on the home of a suspected child rapist who was known to have guns in his house, and they only sent two cops for that,” he said.
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