Former police chief charged in raid on Kansas newspaper investigated by Colorado Bureau of Investigation
The Kansas sheriff who raided a local newspaper last year has been criminally charged and Colorado investigators played a considerable part in the investigation.
Former Marion Police Chief Giden Cody has been charged with felony interference with the judicial process. The charge comes just shy of a year after The Marion Police Department raided the Marion County Record, a local newspaper, and the homes of several of its journalists. The Colorado Bureau of Investigation was brought onto the case in November 2023 to help investigators in Kansas.
The case has no apparent connection to Colorado, which is part of the reason the Kansas Bureau of Investigation asked CBI to help. CBI says it offered no legal opinions, as its agents aren't Kansas law enforcement officers, but that they served as "fact finders."
The criminal complaint against Cody lists a CBI agent and an agent with the Colorado Department of Public Safety as witnesses in the case.
A spokesman for CBI says they sent an agent assigned to the bureau's major crimes division. He also said the practice is rare, but it benefits both states and requests for help can go both ways.
"The KBI request was the first in recent memory," CBI spokesman Rob Low told CBS News Colorado. "CBI did ask KBI to assist with the internal investigation into the employee conduct of now former DNA Scientist Missy Woods to determine possible department policy violations, and CBI asked South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigations to conduct the criminal investigation into Missy Woods."
KBI formally asked for CBI's assistance in November 2023. KBI said at the time that it launched two separate investigations into Cody; one for official misconduct and public corruption related to a computer crime and another for public corruption related to Cody in his official duty.
KBI says the Marion Police Department sent the search warrant that the Marion Police Department served on the newspaper to a KBI agent, but he didn't see the warrant until after it was served.
Cody originally sought and carried out search warrants in August 2023 on the newspaper, the home of its publisher Eric Meyer and the home of Marion City Council Member Ruth Herbel, after learning that journalists at the newspaper had obtained local business owner, Kari Newell's driver's license records as she applied for a liquor license, upon receiving a tip suggesting Newell didn't have a valid license because of a DUI.
Cody claimed he had evidence the publisher and a reporter had broken the law while trying to verify the driving record.
At the same time, the newspaper said it was investigating Cody's time at the Kansas City Police Department in Missouri, the Associated Press reported.
The police raids that followed were heavily 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 Joan Meyer visibly distressed by the ordeal. She died the following day and her son blames his mother's death on the raid and the stress that it caused her.
News of the raid prompted condemnation from dozens of news outlets and press freedom organizations.
Cody was suspended in September 2023 and resigned days later.
CBS News contacted 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 receive an immediate reply.
The Kansas Bureau of Investigation did not respond to an email seeking comment about the case or CBI's assistance.