MARION, Kan. — The former Kansas police chief who led a raid on a newspaper last summer appeared briefly in court for the first time Monday afternoon.

Gideon Cody did not speak during the hearing and would not answer questions as he left the courthouse grounds.

Cody — hired as chief of police in Marion after leaving the Kansas City Police Department under a cloud of possible discipline and demotion — faces one count of interference with the judicial process, a felony with a possible punishment of seven to 23 months in prison.

Judge Ryan W. Rosauer said Cody faces presumptive probation. He was allowed to stay out of jail on an “own-recognizance” bond.

His next court hearing, a status conference, is scheduled for 10 a.m. on Dec. 16. The additional time was granted so Cody’s defense team can look through the “voluminous discovery” in the case before a preliminary hearing where Rosauer said he will take up Cody’s motion to dismiss the charge.

Sal Intagliata, Cody’s lawyer who appeared in court Monday, told a swarming crew of reporters and documentary makers that he looks forward to “the full version” of the story coming out through litigation. He and Cody did not respond to questions about what has not been reported at this time.

On Aug. 11, 2023, Cody and a group of officers served search warrants on the Marion County Record, its editor and owner Eric Meyer, and former Marion City Council member Ruth Herbel, falsely alleging that they had illegally obtained local restaurant-owner Kari Newell’s driving record. The record was publicly available on social media and a state website.

Meyer’s 98-year-old mother, Joan Meyer, died the next day, in part due to the stress of police searching her home and seizing electronic equipment.

Cody’s criminal charge stems from his actions after the raids, when he is alleged to have told restaurateur Newell to delete text messages between the two of them. Newell deleted all messages prior to Aug. 17 — six days after the raids, court records show. That information came to light during an interview with Kansas City television news station KHSB.

Before the raid, Newell had filed a criminal complaint against the Marion County Record and Herbel after Cody and other city officials contacted her to tell her that Herbel knew about a past DUI on Newell’s driving record and intended to use that information to try to deny her a liquor license, according to civil lawsuits filed in the aftermath of the raids.

Cody told Newell that she was a victim of a crime and that someone had stolen her identity to obtain her driving record. That became the basis of Cody’s search warrant application for the newspaper and the private residences of Herbel and Marion County Record editor and owner Eric Meyer.

It turned out that the Marion County Record and Herbel had legally obtained the driving records, which had been posted on Facebook. A Record reporter later verified the information through a publicly available state website.

Marion County Attorney Joel Ensey, after receiving advice from the special prosecutors who would decide to charge Cody, later withdrew the warrants, saying insufficient evidence existed to establish a “legally sufficient nexus between this alleged crime and the places searched and the items seized.”

Ensey, whose family members owned the hotel where Newell operated a restaurant, handed the case over to the special prosecutors, district attorneys from Sedgwick and Riley counties.

Several Marion County Record employees and Herbel have filed federal lawsuits against the city of Marion, Cody and other officials involved in the raids. Cody’s charge is the only criminal case filed in relation to the raid or its aftermath.

Monday’s first appearance had been scheduled as an arraignment where the judge would read the charge against Cody and give him an opportunity to enter a plea. But that portion of the first appearance was moved to the preliminary hearing, which likely won’t be until 2025.

Late last month, Cody’s lawyers filed a motion to dismiss the charges.

Cody’s legal team — Wichita lawyers Intagliata and Brian L. White — argues that special prosecutors Barry Wilkerson and Marc Bennett failed to establish probable cause with their unusual decision to charge Cody through the verbal testimony of a law enforcement officer from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation instead of by written complaint or indictment. The CBI Agent John Zamora’s 10-page sworn testimony failed to state how Cody violated Kansas law, they argue in the motion to dismiss.

At some point between Aug. 11, the day of the raids, and Aug. 17 of last year, Cody told Newell to delete their text messages “because he was trying to protect her” because he didn’t want “anyone to misconstrue anything” about their messages, according to testimony by a CBI agent. Newell later clarified to Zamora that she shared Cody’s concerns because she worried her ex-husband might try to accuse her of having an affair with Cody.

Zamora was able to obtain the missing text messages, and they were introduced as an exhibit at a previous hearing but had not been released to the public or, apparently, to Cody’s legal defense, according to the motion to dismiss. The discovery file has since been shared with the defense, Intagliata said.

“At most, Agent Zamora’s testimony supports a finding that Mr. Cody instructed Ms. Newell to delete electronic communications between Ms. Newell (on her phone only) and himself sometime between August 11 and August 17, 2023,” Cody’s motion to dismiss says. “Even if true, this evidence does not support a crime. For example, Ms. Newell conceded the concern with the text messages was that her ex-husband may have accused the two of having an affair. In other words, the identified concern was unrelated to any criminal proceeding or investigation.”

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