House Minority Leader Vic Miller said Tuesday he would introduce legislation to take away a magistrate’s power to authorize a search warrant, addressing one aspect of the circumstances surrounding the raid on the Marion County Record.
Marion County Record co-owner Joan Meyer leaned into her walker and stood up to law enforcement personnel executing a search warrant in her living room during a bizarre series of legally questionable raids of her residence, the newspaper’s office and a city council member’s home.
The now-withdrawn documents used to justify a search of the Marion County Record show that the police chief knew a reporter was verifying the authenticity of a local business owner’s driving record by searching on a public website — which is legal under Kansas law.
Joan Meyer, surrounded by flowers and escorted to her gravesite by the same police force that may have had a hand in her death, was honored by the community in a Saturday service.
Kansas AG Kris Kobach says state authorities reviewing alleged crimes associated with the raid of a Marion newspaper are interested in whether someone breached the Kansas Criminal Justice Information System.
The police raid on the Marion County Record potentially violated federal law and constitutional rights. It could leave taxpayers covering a big legal settlement.
Marion County Record staff worked through the night to publish the paper’s weekly edition after police raided the newsroom and confiscated computers, cellphones and other items. Authorities also returned property the police took.
Journalists at the Marion County Record worked late into the night to publish their first issue since the widely-criticized raid. “SEIZED… but not silenced,” its headline read.
The Society of Professional Journalists’ board unanimously offered $20,000 to the Marion County Record for legal costs in wake of the seizure of newspaper and personal property by local law enforcement.
“The question isn’t whether reporters are above the law. It’s whether Marion law enforcement is above the law,” Clay Wirestone writes in this Kansas Reflector column.
