The former Kansas police chief who led the last year a raid on a local newspaper was charged with obstruction of justice for allegedly persuading a potential witness to withhold information from investigators who were at the time investigating the former chief’s own conduct.
Gideon Cody resigned from his position with the Marion Police Department in September 2023, less than two months after he launched the beginnings of a criminal investigation into the staff of a weekly newspaper, the Marion County Record, accusing them of committing identity theft, or a similar computer crime, for obtaining information for a story that was ultimately never written. He has since faced a series of federal charges regarding his conduct and the motivations behind it, which have also has sparked nationwide criticism and discussion on journalists’ rights and press freedom in the United States
The criminal charge of obstruction of justice was filed Monday in Marion County Court, shortly after two special prosecutors released a sweeping 124-page report examining the initial police investigation into the newspaper and the complex context in which it unfolded. The report, written by Sedgwick County Prosecutor Marc Bennet and Riley County Prosecutor Barry Wilkerson at the request of the Marion County prosecutor, concluded there was insufficient evidence to suggest that police, reporters or anyone else involved in the case or raid committed crimes under Kansas law.
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But they concluded that some of Cody’s actions following the raid on the Marion County Record — one of several search warrants executed last August in connection with how the newspaper acquired personal driver’s license information from a local restaurant owner — unlawfully interfered with the state investigation that followed. Neither the special prosecutors’ report nor the criminal complaint against Cody provided much detail about what exactly he is accused of, though the report said Cody allegedly asked the business owner, Kari Newell, to delete text messages they exchanged after the raids.
Special prosecutors said Marion Mayor Brogan Jones received a letter on Sept. 29, 2023, from several city attorneys who informed him that Cody had ordered Newell, the restaurant owner, to do so after he executed search warrants at the newspaper’s headquarters and the publisher’s home in August. The mayor placed Cody on administrative leave from the Marion police that same day, and on Oct. 2, Cody resigned.
The report explicitly stated that it would not provide further information about the nature of the text messages or her alleged persuasion to delete them, something Newell herself corroborated in comments to The Associated Press, but prosecutors noted that there was probable cause to file an obstruction of justice charge over the text messages issue.
In the criminal complaint, Marion County Prosecutor Barry Wilkerson alleged that the case stems from conduct that occurred between Aug. 11 and Aug. 17 of last year, during which Cody “knowingly or intentionally … induced a witness to withhold information” in the midst of a criminal investigation.
CBS News reached out to a team of attorneys representing Cody in one of the federal civil lawsuits against him for comment or more information about his legal representation in the criminal case, but did not immediately receive a response.
Cody initially sought out and executed search warrants at the Marion County Record, the home of its publisher Eric Meyer and the home of Marion City Council member Ruth Herbel after learning that reporters at the paper had obtained Newell’s driver’s license records while following up on a tip that suggested she did not have a valid one due to a driving under the influence conviction more than a decade earlier.
Because she owned a local restaurant and was in the process of applying for a liquor license, efforts were made to verify the legitimacy of a driving record that appeared to show she had not driven with a valid license for all those years. They ultimately did not pursue the investigation because a copy of the record had been provided to the newspaper by her ex-husband while the divorce proceedings were pending, and involving the press in the situation did not seem necessary, the reporters later told authorities.
Cody later claimed he had proof that the publisher and a reporter had broken the law by trying to check the driving record. Subsequent raids to seize documents that allegedly supported that claim have been closely scrutinized. Body camera footage of the raid on Meyer’s home, where his 98-year-old mother and newspaper co-owner Joan Meyer also lived, showed Meyer visibly distraught over the ordeal before her death the next day. Her son blamed the raid and the stress it caused him for his mother’s death.
