TOPEKA, Kan. — A former Kansas police chief who led a raid on a weekly newspaper last year has been indicted on a felony charge of obstruction of justice and is accused of persuading a potential witness to conceal information when authorities later investigated his conduct.
The only charge against former Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody is that he knowingly influenced a witness to conceal information on the day the Marion County Record and its publisher’s home were searched, or sometime within six days thereafter.
The charges, filed Monday in state District Court in Marion County, do not detail Cody’s alleged actions.
The raid sparked a national debate about press freedom that focused on Marion, Missouri, a town of about 1,900 people in rolling prairie foothills about 150 miles southwest of Kansas City.
And the mother of newspaper publisher Eric Meyer, who co-owned the paper and lived with him, died of a heart attack the day after the attack, which he claims was caused by the stress of the attack.
Meyer said last week that authorities appeared to be trying to make Cody a “scapegoat” for the attack, despite the involvement of numerous employees.
He said Tuesday he expects the criminal case will ultimately be resolved through a plea agreement and that Cody will not face a trial where he could reveal more details about the attack.
“We’re just journalists here,” he said. “We want the whole story, not just parts of it.”
The report issued by two special prosecutors last week cited text messages exchanged between Cody and a local business owner after the attack.
The store owner said Cody asked her to delete text messages between the two because she was afraid people would get the wrong idea about their relationship, which she said was a professional and platonic one.
The Associated Press left a message seeking comment at what appeared to be Cody’s cellphone number but did not immediately receive a response Tuesday.
Lawyers representing Cody in the federal lawsuit over the attack are not representing him in the criminal case, and it was not immediately clear who would be representing him.
Cody justified the Aug. 11, 2023, search by arguing he had evidence that Meyer, the paper and one of its reporters, Phyllis Zorn, committed identity theft or other computer crimes while verifying the authenticity of copies of business owners’ state driving records provided to the newspaper by an acquaintance.
The business owner had asked the Marion City Council to approve her liquor license, and records showed she may have been driving without a valid license for years, though she later had her license reinstated.
The prosecutor’s report concluded that Meyer, Zorn and the newspaper had committed no crime and that Cody had reached erroneous conclusions about their conduct due to an inadequate investigation.
Zorn used the information he had to legally search the state’s online databases using his own name.
Prosecutors also said the police search warrant signed by the judge contained inaccurate information resulting from an “inadequate investigation” and was not legally valid, but they said they could not prove that Cody knowingly misled the judge.
The obstruction of justice charge against Cody was prosecuted by one of the special prosecutors, Barry Wilkerson, the top prosecutor in Riley County in northeastern Kansas.
The other special prosecutor is Mark Bennett, the district attorney for Sedgwick County, which includes Wichita, the state’s largest city.
A conviction for a first-time offender can carry up to nine months in prison, but the typical punishment is no more than 18 months of probation, according to state sentencing guidelines.
The record’s publisher and current and former employees have filed four federal lawsuits against Cody and other current and former local officials.
The publisher’s lawsuit also includes a wrongful death claim and could result in damages totaling more than $10 million. The city’s current annual budget is about $9.5 million.
The publisher also filed an open records lawsuit in state district court last month, asking the city to turn over documents between police and other local officials.
Police body camera footage from a 2023 search of the publisher’s home shows the publisher’s 98-year-old mother, Joan Meyer, visibly upset and telling officers, “Get out of my house!”
Prosecutors said they could not charge Cody or the other officers involved in the assault in her death because they had no evidence to believe the assault put her life in danger.
Prosecutors also said there were no “significant departures” from how officers had executed other search warrants in the past, but Eric Meyer said seven officers came to the home to conduct the search.
“A few weeks ago, police searched the home of a suspected child rapist who was known to have a gun in his home, and only two officers were dispatched,” he said.
