> the critiques by the restaurant owner that the paper in question often acts like a cheap tabloid

Note, the newspaper never published the DUI of the restaurant owner because they decided it wasn’t relevant to their reporting. All I’m seeing from your comment is a repetition of a baseless accusation from someone trying to justify their actions after the fact.

> Everyone goes through rough periods in life. Both of her incidents happened within a 2 month time span a decade ago so it's safe to assume it's just one serious low point in her life.

FTA:

> The judge was arrested twice in 2012 — once on Jan. 25 in Coffey County and again on Aug. 6 in Morris County.

> In the first arrest, Viar "was charged and entered a diversion agreement — which was extended six months because she refused to get an alcohol and drug evaluation and stopped communicating with her lawyer," according to the Eagle.

> TV station WIBW reported in 2012, adding that at the time, the prosecutor was on the Morris County Anti-Drug Task Force.

> Despite those issues, Viar was reelected as county prosecutor several times.

Seems a bit more involved than just a rough patch. I would personally consider it conduct unbecoming of someone wanting to be a prosecutor or a judge, but I'm not a Kansas voter.

> Everyone goes through rough periods in life. Both of her incidents happened within a 2 month time span a decade ago so it's safe to assume it's just one serious low point in her life.

It's not safe to assume that.

> I guess the suggestion is she is more likely to be sympathetic to the resturant owner's own old DUI being used in the paper's character attack

The suggestion is that she has politically sensitive information that has been nondisclosed and possibly actively suppressed (it should not be unclear how charges were resolved, especially those that occurred while she was an elected law enforcement official), which is bad and possibly an indication of corruption in and of itself, but it also makes her vulnerable to blackmail, especially from orgabized groups that would have greater access to the information that hasn't been public: like, say, law enforcement.

On top of the issues with the search itself, and the probable cause affidavits supporting the warrant application being filed after the warrant was executed, it adds to the impression that this wasn't sloppy adherence to the correct legal standards for the warrant by the judge and instead a deliberate, knowing, and corrupt official abuse of office, (and not just by the police, where that seemed to be the case whatever happened with the judge.)

I think it has little material bearing on the situation, but our past has consequences, and one of which when you’re in a position of extreme trust is it impugns that trust every time your trustability comes up. It create a cloud and give opportunity to question - and if wrong doing is found it exacerbates the situation. In law this turns into more significant punishments, and a tendency to not give you credit where someone who lived without such issues would have been afforded it. You were, after all, already afforded such credit.

I know. In my life I’ve burned trust in similar ways (but not these specific ways). I have bipolar and when the police encounters someone with mania they arrest them. That leads to life long consequences. It doesn’t matter if it’s your fault, or if its due to a mental illness. The next time, you go to jail and no credit is given for a good life lived.

> I guess that's some juicy details but it reminds me of the critiques by the restaurant owner that the paper in question often acts like a cheap tabloid

If a different newspaper (The Wichita Eagle) reports on the judge's DUI, I don't think that you can legitimately use that information to reinforce your view that the original newspaper was a tabloid.

I do feel it's probative, too: someone with pseudo-corrupt secrets might be more opposed to throwing the book at a newspaper investigating someone else with similar pseudo-corrupt secrets.

That is, the judge who was allowed to break rules of a diversion program while a prosecutor (accumulating a further conviction without triggering further consequences) is judging a business owner friendly with local police who broke rules (driving without a license after DUI).

I don’t see how the DUIs are even relevant. Just seems like a smear campaign to discredit the judge.

> the resturant owner's own old DUI being used in the paper's character attack

I thought the issue raised by the newspaper wasn't the restaurateur's DUIs, but rather her continuing to drive around despite having her license suspended/revoked due to those DUIs. That's not just a run of the mill character attack, there's a clear public interest in publishing that information.

I guess all of that somehow culminated in an unlawful warrant. You don't just get to hand-wave unconstitutional conduct; a DUI is small fries, but accusations of impunitive power abuse is something else entirely. The backlash isn't for the DUI or even really the attempted cover-up. The problem (and reason why this made national news) is that they used this relatively minor contrivance as an excuse to abuse their extremely important position for personal power.

If we don't prosecute this kind of behavior, there can be no faith in the rule of law. It is a sad situation that devolved to an inexcusable abuse of power, and that needs to be scrutinized.

Agreed. This doesn’t seem very relevant to the case, and there’s plenty of other jaw-dropping details to report on (like the current top comment’s mention of back dating the warrant application).

Now, I wouldn’t say this DUI history is entirely non-newsworthy. If someone wants to do a story about powerful people getting unusually light punishments for crimes, and this is one example of that, that would be a great data point to report on. But it’s not relevant to the warrant corruption story.