Six days after the Marion County Record‘s items in Kansas were seized in a raid by the Marion Police Department, they are being returned.
Attorney Bernie Rhodes for the Marion County Record said the Marion County Attorney has withdrawn the search warrant, and the items seized are being released.
The Kansas Bureau of Investigation says the “investigation remains open, however, we have determined in collaboration with the Marion County Attorney, that the investigation will proceed independently, and without review or examination of any of the evidence seized on Friday, Aug. 11.”
On Friday, Marion police seized the newspaper’s computers, phones and file server, and the personal cellphones of staff, based on a search warrant investigating alleged identity theft.
Police simultaneously raided publisher and editor Eric Meyer’s home, seizing computers, his cell phone and the home’s internet router. Meyer blames the stress of the home raid for the Saturday death of his 98-year-old mother, Joan, the paper’s co-owner.
According to Meyer, there were questions about a story one week before the police came into his business. His newspaper notified the sheriff and the police chief that they’d obtained documents from the state that a local restaurant owner, Kari Newell, had driven on a suspended license after getting a DUI.
The Marion County Record told law enforcement they had no plans to publish the information in a story, but one week later, police came into the building with a search warrant signed by Marion County Court Magistrate Judge Laura Viar and seized equipment.
Rhodes said the newspaper was investigating the circumstances around Police Chief Gideon Cody’s departure from his previous job as an officer in Kansas City, Missouri. Cody left the Kansas City department earlier this year and began the job in Marion in June.