Ex-police chief who led raid on Kansas newspaper charged with obstruction of justice

The former Kansas police chief who last year led a raid on a local newspaper has been charged with felony obstruction of justice, for allegedly persuading a potential witness to withhold information from investigators who at the time were pursuing a probe into the ex-chief's own conduct.

Gideon Cody resigned from his position at the Marion Police Department in September 2023, less than two months after he spearheaded the beginnings of a criminal inquiry into the staff of a weekly newspaper, the Marion County Record, accusing them of committing identity theft, or a similar computer crime, for how they obtained reporting for a story that was never ultimately written. He's faced a slew of of federal lawsuits since then over his conduct and the motivations behind it, which also sparked national criticism and conversations about journalistic rights and freedom of press in the U.S.

The criminal charge for obstruction of justice was filed Monday in Marion County District Court, shortly after two special prosecutors released an exhaustive 124-page report scrutinizing the original police inquiry into the newspaper and the convoluted context in which it unfolded. That report, authored by Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennet and Riley County Attorney Barry Wilkerson at the request of the district attorney in Marion, found that there wasn't enough evidence to suggest that police, reporters or anyone else involved in the story or the raid had committed crimes under Kansas law.