A journalist’s seemingly routine public records search sparked unprecedented law enforcement raids of a Kansas newspaper office and the publisher’s home, court papers revealed.
The search of Marion County Record offices was based on a police chief’s stated belief that one its reporters committed identify theft by accessing the driver records of a local restaurant owner, according to court documents released by the paper’s attorney, Bernie Rhodes.
“Downloading the document involved either impersonating the victim or lying about the reasons why the record was being sought,” Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody wrote in affidavits supporting raids on the paper’s newsroom, its publisher Eric Meyer’s home and City Council member Ruth Herbel’s residence.
A day after the Aug. 11 raid, Meyer’s 98-year-old mother, Record co-owner Joan Meyer, died, and the publisher blamed her death on stress caused by the police incursion.
The paper has said the raid was unjustified and that its reporter Phyllis Zorn simply found restaurant owner Kari Newell’s driver’s record by routinely using a the state Department of Revenue’s online search engine.
That resource makes any motorist’s history available to anyone, by simply providing the search target’s first and last names, date of birth and driver’s license number.
“The motor vehicle driver’s checker is public facing and free use,” Kansas Department of Revenue spokesperson Zach Denney told NBC News Monday. “If you have my (identifying) information, you can pull it (motor records) out.”
The newspaper said it had received a tip that Newel was convicted of a DUI in 2008 and wanted to know if that spot on her driving record could preclude her from having a liquor license. The paper even reached out to police about the unsolicited information — a claim confirmed by Chief Cody’s affidavits.
Herbel, who was also a target of a raid, received the same unsolicited information about Newell’s DUI.
The raid infuriated press freedom watchdogs, who claimed that the law enforcement action was a blatant violation of constitutional rights. And last week, Marion County Attorney Joel Ensey last week said police had “insufficient evidence” to justify their raids and asked for seized property to be returned.
There’s no conceivable way the paper, accessing a public database, could be guilty of identity theft, said Washburn University Law School Dean Jeffrey Jackson.
And even if the paper committed wrongdoing to gain Newell’s date of birth and driver’s license number, police were wrong to use its most aggressive and intrusive tool, the expert in constitutional law said.
“Just having that information is not an issue,” Jackson told NBC News on Monday. “And even if they [the newspaper], for some reason, had that information [by illegal means], the way to get at that information would be by subpoena.”
The newspaper, even after confirming Newell’s DUI through driving records, did not initially reveal it.
The DUI was only reported by the newspaper when Newell revealed it herself at City Council meeting, as she publicly accused the newspaper of using illegal means to get that information.
“My client did not break the law in using a public website and typing in information she had received,” Rhodes said in statement on Monday. “There is no theory that receiving information could be a criminal act. That is what the Supreme Court said when it ruled that the New York Times and the Washington Post could publish the Pentagon Papers.”
Marion County Attorney Ensey and Chief Cody could not be immediately reached for comment on Monday.
Colin Sheeley contributed.