In August and October, we reported in editorials that police in the small town of Marion, Kansas, had raided the Marion County Record, the newspaper of a 1,902-person prairie community, in an assault on our First Amendment protections and civil liberties that demonstrated “both political and professional stupidity.”
On Aug. 11, Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody and his five-officer police force raided the Marion County Record newsroom and the home of editor Eric Meyer, seizing computers and cell phones belonging to Meyer and his reporters.
The illegal raid drew widespread, worldwide attention and condemnation of the police force for violating not only the norms of how journalists and police interact but also, and far more significantly, the federal Privacy Protection Act of 1980. Newspapers, lawmakers and even police agencies around the country rebuked the illegal raid.
The Kansas Bureau of Investigation immediately began an investigation of Cody’s clearly illegal actions.
The Marion County Record refused to back down, printing the next edition with the headline “SEIZED … but not silenced; KBI takes over.” I bought several stickers with the slogan from the Kansas Press Association for our newsroom to support the Marion County Record.
Facing public pressure, Marion Mayor David Mayfield reversed course and suspended Cody on Oct. 1. On Oct. 2, Cody resigned, packed up and fled to Hawaii, though he is still subject to the investigation. The newspaper had also been investigating Cody’s work history
Four of the police department’s five officers quit in the weeks after the raid. The last officer on the force was made the interim police chief, but even he quit the force once replacements were brought in. KBI handed off the investigation to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation after the Kansas Reflector newspaper found through its reporting that KBI agents knew Marion police were planning the raid.
On April 1, the Marion County Record filed a federal lawsuit against Cody, two of the officers, a Marion County Sheriff’s Office deputy involved and Mayfield — who the lawsuit alleges ordered the raid — on First Amendment and Fourth Amendment grounds, as well for violating federal laws protecting journalists. Mayfield left the mayor’s office in November and has largely refused to talk to the media.
In a story posted to the Record’s website this week, Kansas Reflector reporter Sherman Smith reported that the lawsuit claims the raid was revenge for “unfavorable news coverage through falsified and invalid search warrants.”
The Record had been highly critical of Mayfield, who was a former Kansas Highway patrolman and Marion police chief before he was elected in 2019. Mayfield had written on his Facebook page 17 days before the raid that “the real villains in America … are the radical ‘journalists,’ ‘teachers’ & ‘professors.’”
Mayfield and Cody alleged planned the raid based on the false claim that a Marion County Record reporter, Phyllis Zorn, committed identity theft to obtain the driving records of local coffeeshop and restaurant owner Kari Newell, who had reportedly been driving around town after her license had been suspended for drunk driving.
Zorn had been given the tip after Newell applied for a liquor license; however, in Kansas, driving suspensions are public record. Zorn confirmed the records with the Kansas Department of Revenue’s online database, searchable by any member of the public, but Meyer ultimately decided not to publish a story and instead notified the police chief and county sheriff. However, the newspaper did report that Newell stated at a public meeting that she had a DUI but was still driving around town.
Cody allegedly omitted all these details — including that he was told the paper was investigating Newell for a story and Newell’s public comments — when deceptively obtaining a search warrant from a judge to justify the raid on the newspaper, without which he would not have had probable cause.
The lawsuit also alleges wrongful death. The home of Meyer’s 98-year-old mother, Joan Meyer, who was the co-owner of the paper, was also raided. Surveillance video clearly showed Meyer’s mother — a firebrand — angrily chastising the officers in her home during the illegal raid. Smith quoted her on the video saying to police, “I’m not dumb. I may be 90-some years old, but I know what’s going on. And what’s going on is illegal as hell.” She died the next day from a heart attack reportedly caused by the stress.
Meyer’s April 1 lawsuit isn’t the first, but the third. Zorn another reporter, and the newspaper’s office manager, have also filed two lawsuits citing violations of their constitutional rights.
Should the paper win in court, which seems highly likely given the overwhelming evidence, Meyer told the Kansas Reflector that the paper will donate any punitive damages to community projects and causes supporting “cherished traditions of freedom.”
Cody and Mayfield had hoped to intimidate and silence their critics, but by stupidly and illegally targeting a newspaper, the amplification of their acts is deafening and the courts are listening.
Christopher Fox Graham
Larson Newspapers
Marion-County-Record-v-City-of-Marion
