County Attorney Rejects Warrant Used In Raid Of Small Kansas Newspaper, Asks Court To Force Cops To Return Seized Devices
from the fucking-around,-finding-out dept
Last week, cops in a small Kansas town decided they’d just toss aside the First Amendment and raid a local newspaper.
There were competing narratives. The first was that the paper was in possession of information related to the drunk driving arrest of local business owner Kari Newell, who had allegedly been convicted of DUI and driving without a license.
The thing is the paper never made this information public. Instead, it verified the information handed to it by a source and then contacted the Marion, Kansas police department.
The second narrative appeared during an interview with the surviving co-owner of the paper, Eric Meyer. This one suggested the raid of the paper’s offices and the home of 98-year-old co-owner, Joan Meyer, were prompted by the paper’s ongoing investigation of Marion police chief Gideon Cody’s misconduct history, which allegedly involved sexual misconduct.
I used the word “surviving” for a reason. Joan Meyer died shortly after suffering through the raid of her paper’s office and the raid of her home. During these raids, nearly every electronic device possessed by Meyer and the paper was seized, including the paper’s servers and Joan Meyer’s personal computer and internet router.
According to what little information was available (including a very noncommittal statement by the Marion PD), the supposed crime was identity theft aided and abetted by unauthorized computer access.
But whatever the real reason for this disturbing abuse of government power, it appears to be headed towards a swift denouement. At least some of this accelerated pace can be attributed to the piqued interest of outside government entities, which arrives on the heels of nationwide coverage.
Outrage from Eric Meyer, the owner and publisher of the Marion Record, appears to have reached the KBI [Kansas Bureau Investigation].
On Wednesday, the law enforcement agency announced in conjunction with the Marion County Attorney that the investigation would continue without the examination of any evidence seized during the raid.
That accompanies a letter sent by the paper’s attorney, Bernard Rhodes — a letter that points out the raids violated the First Amendment, Fourth Amendment, and state laws that protect journalists and their sources.
All of this has added up to Marion County Attorney Joel Ensey announcing that he has formally withdrawn the warrant and has asked for law enforcement to return everything officers seized.
On Monday, August 14, 2023, I reviewed in detail the warrant application made on Friday, August 11, 2023 to search various locations in Marion County including the office of the Marion County Record. The affidavits, which I am asking the court to release, established probable cause to believe that an employee of the newspaper may have committed the crime of K.S.A. 21-5839, Unlawful Acts Concerning Computers. Upon review, however, I have come to the conclusion that insufficient evidence exists to establish a legally sufficient nexus between this alleged crime and the places searched and items seized. As a result, I have submitted a proposed order asking the court to release the evidence seized. I have asked local law enforcement to return the material seized to the owners of the property.
The matter remains under review until such time as the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, the agency now in charge of the investigation, may submit any findings to the office for a charging decision. At such time, a determination will be made as to whether sufficient evidence exists under the applicable rules and standards to support a charge for an offense.
Some good things there. The call for the release of the documents. The call for the release of the seized electronics (albeit on that doesn’t appear to demand law enforcement destroy any copies of data investigators may have made). And the correct call on the incident in question: it appears unlawful, even if the county attorney (for reasons related to his continued employment) isn’t willing (yet) to go on record as calling “unlawful.”
There are some bad things, too. It seems unlikely the KBI will uncover evidence of criminal activity by newspaper staff. But it does allow another law enforcement agency to root around in seized data and try to find some connection between the charge leading to these rights violations, in hopes of turning them into something resembling probable cause.
The county attorney has asked law enforcement to release everything seized. But it’s only a request. That the Marion PD has yet to publicly state it will release the seized devices suggests it’s not nearly as willing to admit it’s in the wrong. Nor is it as willing to make things rights. And that’s going to end up costing county residents their tax dollars, which will be added to the tab already rung up by local cops — one that now includes shattered trust and an extremely damaged relationship with the town it serves.
Filed Under: 1st amendment, eric meyer, free press, gideon cody, intimidation, joan meyer, joel ensey, journalism, kansas, kbi, marion county, police raid, raid, warrant
Companies: marion county record
Comments on “County Attorney Rejects Warrant Used In Raid Of Small Kansas Newspaper, Asks Court To Force Cops To Return Seized Devices”
To build on a comment from an earlier article: The only amusing bit about all of this is how the revelations of Kari Newell’s DUI arrest, the magistrate judge who signed the warrant having her own DUI issues, and the pre-Marion past of Gideon Cody would likely never have become national knowledge had the cops not raided the newspaper. Now all the dirty laundry has come to light in a far more embarassing way. On top of that, everyone involved with greenlighting and performing the search-and-seizure has set themselves up for a First Amendment lawsuit they’re all but guaranteed to lose (if they don’t settle first).
“Fuck Around and Find Out” ain’t just for social media, folks. These idiots stand as proof.
Re: Judge who issued search warrant
By far, the most guilty person in this fiasco is the local JUDGE who issued the illegal Search Warrant !
But as usual, the corrupt JUDGE is ignored in discussion of these types of horredous government crimes.
The entire purpose of a judicial search warrant is to prevent such police abuse.
Yet, everyone seems to view government judges as naive pawns who are easily manipulated by police and prosecutors — and thus largely innocent of any wrong doing.
Re: Re:
That judge deserves a fair share of the blame, but the cops who submitted what is likely a bullshit affidavit and performed the raid itself should receive most of it.
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the dirtbag cops would have been totally blocked WITHOUT judge Laura Viar officially AUTHORIZING their felonius raid.
She was the critical failure in the system and deserves 75% of the blame, but most people somehow share your view of her as being merely a minor participant in these multiple felonies.
Re: Re: Re:2
Fair point.
Re: Re: not a real judge
Actually, just a magistrate, not a real judge. And as an added bonus, a local magistrate who has her own reasons to feel sensitive about reporting on DUI cases.
In light of her history, it is understandable that she accepted the police affidavit and issued what most people seem to consider a questionable warrant. If rthe newspaper were to dig into her history, there could be some problems with her application to be a magistrate, and perhaps some interesting issues as to her compliance in a diversion program.
Should she have conflicted out? I think that in Kansas the standard is ``only if there were a risk that people would find out”.
Re: Re: illegal warrant?
If it was indeed an illegal warrant, then someone purjured himself to do it — a felony.
One of the owners died because of the stress of those illegal searches.
That purjurer ought to be charged with felony murder (death consequent to the performance of a felony.
FWIW
Aww you left out the statement by the head of KBI who literally was defending the raid in the early days until that whole pesky death, Cody throwing the KBI under the bus, & that itty bitty little thing about there being a tracker in at least 1 of the devices they took & where they were being kept that wasn’t the PD…
Of course now the only person allowed to speak to the world about the affidavit isn’t in today and they haven’t managed to produce said “legal” document used to underpin a bogus raid trying to protect MAGAits from any bad publicity.
Oh and still not heard if the drunken chef has been arrested yet or is still driving.
Re:
Whoops forgot to mention we’re also waiting for the report from the firm that is forensically examining the computers to see if they were accessed and stuff after being stolen.
Of course the PD also had their logins and passwords, bank records, and other things well outside of the scope of you stole her identity!!!
As I said in the other thread, that is all based on drunken chef claiming that the paper stole a piece of her mail to get the information to verify her DL was still not valid.
No comment from the vice mayor who was also raided which TOTES had nothing to do with her being the single hold out on the council voting to say yes this drunk driver who willfully kept violating the law “Out of necessity” should be granted a liquor license so she can cater in her soon to be alcohol interlocked vehicle.
Anyone know if Kansas is so strict that demand an interlock for a first DUI offense or did she need to have done so much more… like getting drunk with a local prosecutor turned Judge and driving into a school building?
Re:
Wow, it’s almost like they’re all trying to cover their asses because they Tried That In A Small Town and found out that even small towns don’t like fascists. Who would’ve thought~.
What’s the word for that?
I’m like 99% sure that there’s a word(s) that describes this scenario but it’s just not coming to me. Maybe Mike Masnick knows what I’m talking about?
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It’s hardly a surprise that the prospect of journalists being held accountable for their dirty tricks, their creating and spreading of fake news, their efforts to undermine the American family and subvert our Democracy in order to advance the interest of degenerate, pro-child grooming communists (like many who read and write for this very site), and their potential law-breaking would motivate other sleazy media organizations to rally around them.
Journalists are some of the most despicable, least trustworthy people in America.
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Please show us the proof of any wrongdoing that led to the raid on this newspaper. I’ll wait.
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It’s hardly a surprise that the prospect of “conservatives” being held accountable for their dirty tricks, their creating and spreading of lies, their efforts to undermine progressive policy and subvert our Democracy in order to advance the interest of degenerate, pro-child grooming fascists (like the op), and their potential law-breaking would motivate other so called conservatives to rally around them.
Re:
That are more trustworthy that the current crop of politicians, especially GOP politicians, who want to make Amerika great again by turning anybody who is not a member of the elite into a serf, if they are white males, otherwise into a slave.
Wow. I can play MDS-5 Bingo with you and win in three minutes.
Credit only where credit is due.
Marion, Kansas has less than 2,000 people. Its police department consists of the chief, and 4 full time officers. source
How much technical knowledge do you think this police department has, all told? How often do you think they seize computers? (They seized routers! What were they expecting to get off of commodity routers?)
In another small town, with a larger force, the entire police department quit over wages. Does Marion, Kansas somehow attract higher caliber talent?
The question isn’t “are they going to retain copies of the data?” It’s “do they have the first clue about computer forensics?”
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Probably not, but they did assume that seizing all electronics would shut down publication.
Re: Re:
It’s unlikely the newspaper had encrypted hard drives either, or BIOS passwords, which means yeah the cops could potentially have read what was on the drives and found out who the anonymous tipsters about the chief’s past were. The ones who according to other reporting said he got in trouble over verbal harassment(insults) of a female officer in KC.
And, yes, this gives at least the appearance of just wanting to shut down the newspaper so they wouldn’t make waves. The same paper whose strict ethics wouldn’t allow them to report on that stuff without a source on the record, or if they they thought a tip was given in support of a personal vendetta, ironically.
And yes I am covering myself by saying potentially and gives the appearance.
Just for fun.
STATES, Counties, Towns/cities..
States have investigative facilities, and the ability to do Lots of things.
Counties and Cities have VERY LITTLE.
So, all of this stuff should have been given to the KBI(?) STATE to use its full ability. NOT the County that has NO ability to search and figure out whats on the computers.
Re:
At this point I doubt KBI would want to be associated with an illegal search warrant, although who knows from the start. Beyond that, the police had all the logins and the computers were running so they could have read the files and done word searches on them right then. That requires no technical expertise.
Further, Mr. Meyer has never said anything about password protecting the BIOSes of the computers or encrypting either files or drives, don’t know if the paper did-they do seem to be a bit informal. I do know that if they didn’t do those things it would be trivially easy to access and read information on the hard drives at least on most Windows machines by live booting either a Windows repair disk or a Linux distro for example.
If in fact files were read the papers avenues of recourse are limited: have any “evidence” so gathered excluded from any court proceedings and file a civil suit.
The problem with the civil suit could be qualified immunity since apparently it is a doctrine that mostly says government actors can only be liable if there is a precedent where one of them was convicted for doing the exact same thing. And Techdirt has posted at least one interesting story about judges making that argument.(1 of 3 in a child abuse case in Colorado, social worker making false report-the other 2 judges were sane).
And if anyone happened to read any files that contained info about sources saying things regarding the police chief I am sure they forgot them immediately since they were not relevant to the investigation.
Re: Re:
You missed where the head of KBI was defending the PD early on talking about reporters doing the illegal things…
The tone changed after the death & the warrant being pulled.
Now the KBI is still “investigating” to see if the paper violated a protected computer system they are charged with protecting… I would not be shocked to learn that the KBI is looking for CYA material against all of the players in this.
Re: Re: you missed
If the City did this, they do not have the ability to Do computer forensics. THAT is State. And the KBI should have STOMPED on that Quick.
Local police have no detectives, or much of anything, the STATE pays a few groups to do this FOR the cities, OWNED by the STATE.
As soon as the Chief Turned it ON, THEY LOST. it became PERSONAL.
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My point has absolutely nothing to do with who should have done computer forensics.
It is that the Marion PD potentially could have looked at files that had contact or identifying info on confidential sources not relevant to their allegations in this particular case.
Yes, they shouldn’t have done so, and we hope they didn’t.
But if they did access such info then they could potentially use that to cause problems for those sources-if the PD did access that data and does go after those sources and they get caught, sure, it’s a problem for them.
But please understand that no matter what if any consequences accessing such info might cause the PD if they did in fact do that those consequences would not put that info back in the computers only and erase it from the officers’ minds.
Re: Re: Re:2 The difficulty
Will be getting this to court. Then Winning.
Then get the Court to figure out WHAt the city Police were looking for, and Protect that person.
See, I find it funny, That(here at my location) they caught a Mayor swindling money from the town. Kicked him out and the state DIDNT take him to court.
And the problem is that the People living here, CANT take the person to court EITHER.