The police chief who led a highly criticized raid of a small Kansas newspaper has been suspended, the mayor confirmed to The Associated Press on Saturday.
Marion Mayor Dave Mayfield in a text said he suspended Chief Gideon Cody on Thursday. He declined to discuss his decision further and did not say whether Cody was still being paid.
Voice messages and emails from the AP seeking comment from Cody’s lawyers were not immediately returned Saturday.
The Aug. 11 searches of the Marion County Record’s office and the homes of its publisher and a City Council member have been sharply criticized, putting Marion at the center of a debate over the press protections offered by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Why don’t you break it down? Simple question.
News organizations are typically issued seapenas for specific information because just raiding them and going through everything can reveal sources for unrelated stories. News organizations should have the ability to protect confidential sources if needed. Reason people are saying unconstitutional is because first amendment protects speech and freedom of press.
At least that’s how I understand it but I am not a lawyer.
I’m looking for something hyper specific, legal. Thanks for taking a whack.
I think the usual case involves information from a confidential source, the publication of which by the press is absolutely protected by the First Amendment.
In this case, it was a newspaper reporter who directly was accused of breaking the law to obtain confidential information from the government. The reporter either falsely impersonated the subject of the records or falsely certified as to her reason for accessing them, either violates state and federal law notably the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which is what the search warrant cited.
The press’s remedy for obtaining public records is through FOIA, which is itself a requirement of the First Amendment, on the basis that speech is infringed when the government doesn’t make its workings known to the public.
The search warrant made sense to me, and seemed that, if true, the only reasonable conclusion is that the reporter broke the law.