A raid on a Kansas newspaper likely broke the law, experts say. But which one? | Hacker News Reader

A raid on a Kansas newspaper likely broke the law, experts say. But which one?

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This is a wild comment from reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/15w0tkr/affidavits_re...

"The judge had prior DUIs, the first one ending in a diversion program during which she got arrested in a different county for another DUI while driving with a suspended license (for the first one). She never told the first county about the second arrest, which violated the terms of her diversion program. At the time, she was her county's top prosecutor, and on the Anti-Drug Task Force."

This kind of corruption is very common in many parts of America. It's really not like other developed countries.

It's not even like other developed parts of America.

That's very true, which is why I wrote "in many parts of America". Some places are somewhat well-run, on par with other developed nations corruption-wise, and then other places resemble the most corrupt countries in the world. Most of Kansas is probably in the latter group, and various other states like Mississippi and Alabama.

On top of this huge variance state-to-state, it's likely even worse when you compare county-to-county. Even within the same state, some low-population and usually remote counties can be incredibly corrupt, whereas the cities are fine.

I'm curious in an example of what cities are fine? I feel like so many cities are wildly corrupt that the small areas can't even remotely compare.

It's a different kind of corruption. But I partially grew up in a rural area / small town and this sort of thing was a constant factor you just had to account for. The only thing surprising about this case is that it became national news.

> Most of Kansas is probably in the latter group, and various other states like Mississippi and Alabama.

Is this just a "those backwards rednecks" crack, or do you have some evidence to back this up? "Well-run" Massachusetts has a big scandal around their state police every few years. Most recently in 2022, a former president of the state police union was convicted of RICO charges.

Do states like the ones you mentioned have higher RICO convictions of law enforcement and other state officials per capita, or something?

The amount of cases where police routinely violate constitutional rights (like search, etc) in big cities like NYC, LA, etc is staggering.

It's a country wide issue. To try to say, "oh it's only in small towns," is to completely bury your head in the sand in regards to one's local jurisdiction.

Youtube is filled with videos of said violations and it's enough to have many channels covering it with plenty of content.

There really needs to be some jail time for this. As the old saying goes, "we need to send a message to all the other law breakers, that such behavior will not be tolerated."

Eh. Employees of the justice system acting like they're above the law is a thing in more places than it isn't. In many places you don't hear about it, either because the local judge never got a DUI to have to lie about, or because they were more successful in covering it up.

The main reason we're hearing about this one is that they went after a newsroom, and reporters everywhere will dig up every piece of dirt in the vicinity if you're dumb enough to do that one. Which is why they usually don't.

I remember when Dominique Strauss-Khan was arrested for rape.

Lots of folks were pointing out no other country would have arrested him. Certainly not in his native France.

Same is true with the blood lady who had the fake tests. She got so many powerful people, including the head of the WSJ, as supporters.

Didn’t help a bit.

We do better at holding the powerful to account than most other countries.

Reminds me of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiegel_affair

That was in Germany, less than 20 years after the Nazis were in power and a dictatorship was in place. Remember, Spain was a dictatorship until 1975. Many other countries were pretty backwards in many ways too. All of Europe has progressed a lot since 1963 when the Spiegel affair happened.

Do you have research data to support this?

The article from that thread has evidence that this was a deliberate conspiracy. Regardless of the flimsy justification, the affidavits for the search were backdated after the search happened. So the question of how valid the search may have been is moot if they are provably done in bad faith. They didn't even bother with a justification until they were worried about being caught. And apparently also targeted other local pols with similarly baseless searches. That puts the whole ordeal in the conspiracy zone and implicates a lot of people in a lot of felonies.

This one had better details imo https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37203078

Those are certainly more informative details. Top comment:

>We have now discovered that the probable cause affidavits were not filed with the District Court until three days after the illegal searches were executed. While the affidavits purport to be signed before Magistrate Viar on the day of the illegal searches, no explanation has been provided why they were not filed prior to the execution of the illegal searches.

It's not clear if police apologists are still seeking ways create benefit of the doubt - but their job seems even tougher than usual.

The real question is: what sanctions are available if it’s shown that the cops broke the law, either by providing false information for the warrant or by breaking some other law?

Without penalties ‘accountability’ becomes harder. At least the sheriff can’t say “I thought they had a gun.”

I applaud the corrupt cops and judges in this case. They did what every cop and judge does by acting crooked and raiding those who want to hold them accountable.

They did one thing differently from everyone else: When one person died from their abuse, they stopped and allowed The Media to report on it. All the other cops and judges cover up their murders.

We are ripping the single most honest group of cops and judges on Planet Earth.

To summarize the newspaper was engaged in questionable behavior in their reporting. When reporting on a local restaurant they, allegedly broke into the social media and other accounts of the owner. Reminds me of the British scandal where the press were breaking into people's voicemail inboxes.

Other businesses in the area say this is not the first time the newspaper has done this.

The police executed a search warrant in conjunction with the claims looking for evidence this is true.

The newspaper alleges the search warrant was really just an excuse and what they were looking for was information about the police chief who they were also reporting on.

Seems fairly straight forward?

Did the police seize only what was approved by the search warrant? Did they misrepresent or fabricate any of the claims needed to get that search warrant?

If they had legitimate grounds to get the search warrant and they executed, it only to the extent allowed by law then they broke no laws.

The search warrant was itself illegal. Hiding behind it is not a valid defense.

Why do you say that the search warrant was illegal?

A search warrant of a newspaper is not inherently illegal.

On the other hand, if I understand correctly, the search warrant was authorized (or at least the authorization was filed) only three days after the search. Post hoc approval of search warrants is almost certainly not legal. If that wasn't a clerical mixup, then yes, the search warrant was illegal. (I'm not going to get too bothered by an approved search warrant that didn't get filed for three days because a clerk messed up - if that's what happened.)

According to the article, the state shield law says that you can't execute a search warrant on a newspaper. It must be a subpoena in order to prevent abuse of power against the free press.

Allegedly, they weren't trying to uncover newspaper sources, they were investigating identity theft. I'm not convinced either state or federal law would have applied here, though getting a court order beyond the warrant would have avoided the controversy entirely.

Perhaps they were worried that the evidence would have been deleted if they'd waited.

Or perhaps, they simply really were using it as a cover to raid the office to destroy any info about the chief.

Hopefully time will tell.

> Allegedly, they weren't trying to uncover newspaper sources, they were investigating identity theft.

The allegation of identity theft got them the warrant. However, that allegation seems like a lie, when it's compared against the event the cops were investigating.

Reporter Phyllis Zorn verified the tip by conducting a driver’s record search on the Department of Revenue’s website, using Newell’s first and last name and the driver’s license number for Newell that the record had received from its source. The results showed the tip about Newell’s record was accurate.

Being caught in a lie might explain why the warrant was withdrawn.

ref: https://www.kcur.org/news/2023-08-20/now-withdrawn-affidavit...

I would note, while I side with the news paper, allegations are sufficient to get a warrant so long as they are credible and convince a judge they are.

My opinion, IANL, is they are and never were credible and the police in collusion with the judge did something at least unethical if not illegal.

According to the article a warrant is not enough in Kansas. They had a further obligation in local law that raised the burden on the police force. That they didn’t seem to meet that burden is the crux of the article.

Unfortunately, the only remedy ever given for bad search warrants is exclusion of evidence from trial. Since the newspaper isn't likely to be put on trial, no remedy is forthcoming.

Perhaps those involved should be charged by the DOJ for violation of Constitutional rights... Sounds like the actors were fraudulently acting under color of law.

This feels inherently suspicious.

Newspaper investigates local restaurant. Newspaper investigates local police. Local police go to local restaurant owner. "Hey, those reporters we both hate, they didn't happen to break some law did they?" Or the same thing, but initiated by the restaurant owner bitter over the negative investigation.

Under normal circumstances alleging misconduct by reporters who conducted a truthful negative investigation of you would have negligible credibility, because you have an obvious motive to fabricate. The police taking the allegations seriously solely because they too hate the reporters is, of course, misconduct.

> To summarize the newspaper was engaged in questionable behavior in their reporting. When reporting on a local restaurant they, allegedly broke into the social media and other accounts of the owner.

Citation needed.

There is no evidence that the newspaper was engaged in questionable behavior. The attorneys for the state have suggested the search warrant was faulty and have withdrawn it [0]

There is evidence that the sheriff had motive for punitive behavior against the newspaper.

We rightly hold raids on newspapers to a higher standard, this standard was not met and the police likely broke several laws because of it. That’s what the article documents.

To summarize, you didn’t summarize at all. You presented a biased defense of the police that is not in evidence in the linked article, nor anywhere else.

[0] https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/16/kansas-newsp...

"We have now discovered that the probable cause affidavits were not filed with the District Court until three days after the illegal searches were executed. While the affidavits purport to be signed before Magistrate Viar on the day of the illegal searches, no explanation has been provided why they were not filed prior to the execution of the illegal searches."

"The affidavit from Cody goes on to accuse Phyllis Zorn, an employee at the newspaper, of downloading Newell's information from a state website, something Zorn admitted to doing by using her own information."

Story containing links to primary documents: https://www.kshb.com/news/local-news/investigations/breaking...

> When reporting on a local restaurant they, allegedly broke into the social media and other accounts of the owner.

I don't remember that allegation, can you share a link?

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