The Marion County Record’s parent company and Eric Meyer, its editor and publisher, accuses the city of Marion, the Marion County Commission and five current and former local officials of violating free press rights and the right to be free from unreasonable law enforcement searches guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. The lawsuit also notified the defendants that Meyer and the newspaper plan to add other claims, including that officials wrongly caused the death of Meyer’s mother the day after the raids, which the lawsuit attributes to a stress-induced heart attack.
You remember the story: police raided a small-town newspaper in Kansas, seizing computers and phones. Pilar Pedraza, a political reporter for KAKE Wichita, got an exclusive sit-down with the woman at the center of the story.
A police raid without precedent on a weekly newspaper alarmed First Amendment advocates. The real story of how it happened, though, is rooted in the roiling tensions and complex history of a few key community members.
The initial online search of a state website that led a central Kansas police chief to raid a local weekly newspaper was legal, a spokesperson for the agency that maintains the site said Monday, as the newspaper remains under investigation.
Exclusives
Late Saturday, the Marion County Record’s attorney, Bernie Rhodes, provided copies of the affidavits used in the raid to The Associated Press and other news media. The documents that had previously not been released. They showed that reporter Phyllis Zorn’s obtaining of restaurant operator Kari Newell’s driving record was the driving force behind the raid.
A search warrant that cleared the way for the raid of a Kansas newspaper last Friday has been withdrawn. Marion County Attorney Joel Ensey withdrew the warrant that served as the basis for the raid of the Marion County Record by the Marion Police Department last Friday.
