(CN) — A reporter for a small-town Kansas newspaper that was raided on Aug. 11 is suing the local police chief in federal court.
In a complaint filed Wednesday in federal court in Kansas, Debbie K. "Deb" Gruver alleges that Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody seized her cell phone from her hand during a search of the offices of the Marion County Record, causing an unspecified injury, despite neither Gruver nor her phone being mentioned in the search warrant or in the application for the warrant.
He did this, the complaint says, "in retaliation for Ms. Gruver exercising her protected rights under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution as a reporter for the Record." Gruver also accuses Cody of violating her Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures.
Gruver was investigating the background of Cody, who took the chief's job in Marion earlier this year after serving as a captain in the Kansas City, Missouri, police department.
The Record had been investigating allegations of misconduct during Cody's 24-year career in Kansas City, but was unable to substantiate the allegations, and did not publish a story. Cody was aware that Gruver was the reporter investigating him, the complaint says.
Cody did not immediately reply to a request for comment on Wednesday evening. In a response to Courthouse News the day after the Aug. 11 raid, he defended it, saying that once the full story was available, "the judicial system that is being questioned will be vindicated."
Gruver also alleges the application and warrant were facially invalid because they said a search done on a public-facing government website was illegal and done contrary to state and federal laws that protect journalists' from work products being seized.
The application and warrant were substantially invalid because "existing evidence did not establish a legally sufficient nexus between the alleged crime and the places searched and items seized," the complaint says, reflecting language used by Marion County Attorney Joel Ensey when he moved to return the seized items less than a week after the searches were conducted of the Record's offices and the home of publisher Eric Meyer and his 98-year-old mother, Joan, who died the next day.
Eric Meyer has cited stress caused by the raid as a cause of his mother's death.
Many experts who spoke to Courthouse News said the raid and search appeared to violate the Privacy Protection Act of 1980, which prohibits authorities from using search warrants to obtain journalists’ work products without probable cause and requires authorities to instead use a subpoena, which news organizations can then challenge. Additionally, Kansas journalists are also covered by a shield law.
Gruver, a longtime Kansas journalist who had worked at the Record for about a year at the time of the raid, is represented by Wichita attorney Blake A. Shuart. She is suing Cody in his individual capacity and seeking punitive damages.
The searches appear to have been prompted by a complaint from local restaurant owner Kari Newell, who accused the newspaper of invading her privacy by obtaining copies of her driving record, which included a 2008 drunken driving conviction.
The complaint says Record reporter Phyllis Zorn had confirmed the conviction on the Kansas Department of Revenue's public-facing website, which she had been directed to by the Department, whose spokesman later publicly confirmed that Zorn's online search was legal.
Editor’s note: Courthouse News reporter Andrew J. Nelson worked with the plaintiff, Deb Gruver, 21 years ago when he was an intern at the Wichita Eagle.
Follow @nelson_aj
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