A former Kansas police chief who led a raid last year on a weekly newspaper has been charged with felony obstruction of justice.
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 on Aug. 12 in state district court in Marion County and is not more specific about Cody’s alleged conduct.
A message seeking comment left at a possible cellphone number for Cody 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.
The raid, which sparked a national debate about press freedom, was focused in Marion, a town of about 1,900 people set among rolling prairie hills about 150 miles southwest of Kansas City, Missouri. Also, newspaper Publisher Eric Meyer’s mother, who co-owned the newspaper and lived with him, died of a heart attack the day after the raid, and he blames the stress of the raid.
Cody has justified the Aug. 11, 2023, raid by saying he had evidence the Marion County Record, its publisher, and one of its reporters committed identity theft when they accessed a public record held by the Kansas Department of Revenue.
Marc Bennett and Barry Wilkerson, the prosecutors, said in a recent report on their investigation that Cody and his officers apparently misunderstood how the website worked. The police rushed to secure warrants for the paper and the home of its publisher and reporter without waiting for the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, the probe found.
The prosecutors said there was no illegal acts related to crafting and executing the warrants because Cody and his officers thought the law had been broken.
“Put another way, it is not a crime under Kansas law for a law enforcement officer to conduct a poor investigation and reach erroneous conclusions,” Bennett and Wilkerson wrote.
The woman whose driving record the Marion County Record obtained has said Cody asked her to delete text messages she exchanged with him before the raid was carried out.
Several lawsuits have been brought against Cody and the city, including one from a reporter whose phone was seized outside the Marion County Record building. She settled for $235,000 in July.
