Kansas Bureau of Investigation takes lead following police raid of newspaper
kansascity.com
kansascity.com
Isn't Ensey the guy whose family owns the hotel/liquor license that started all of this?
Kari Newell is the individual with the DUI that is attempting to get the liquor license and whose information was allegedly obtained illegally, prompting the search.
I'm not sure this is grounds for disqualification. No matter how Ensey decides to proceed against the police I don't think it moves the needle on whether or not Newell gets her liquor license or doesn't, so can't possibly harm or help his family's interests.
EDIT: Maybe the argument that he's biased is that he's inclined to sweep it under the run to keep his family's name out of the paper? That's reasonable.
It seems a felony DUI conviction would bar Newell from securing a liquor license [1]. (I don't believe Newell had a felony DUI conviction.)
> No, a felony must be expunged to work as an employee who serves, mixes and dispenses alcohol or manages employees who handle alcohol.
Jesus. Stripping people of their employment for a few years is acceptable if the offense is related to the employment. But forcing someone to switch careers or to sell their business for life? That's nuts.
It looks like a felony DUI in Kansas means you're on your third or fourth DUI [1].
That's an awful lots of "if"s to attach to a lifelong limitation.
F.ex. Do we all want to bet how often politician and wealthy donors' children take a felony DUI charge vs the general populace?
We can have a meaningful discussion whether a single bad decision should destroy a life,but let's call it what it is, a decision, not a "chance".
They go unpunished.
And yet, they were still committing the crime of driving under the influence... they (and everyone else) just got lucky.
Personally, I think bars should just be required to take keys. Take a breathalyzer, get your keys back. And the bar has liability for this. These aren't rocket science, million dollar devices.
In most states they already do, under so-called "dram shop laws."
But since it's very easy to lie about where someone was drinking, the incentives are such you still need the bar owner willing to enforce this. If only we had some heuristics for who might be appropriate!
And require a bar to be able to produce a signed result for anyone who bought a drink at their establishment, if subsequently requested.
There will always be loopholes, but it feels like we could do more to preclude DUIs instead of punishing only those we catch.
If we really cared about it as much as the legal penalties make us feel like we do, there wouldn't be any wiggle room for wink-wink, nudge-nudge.
Three people shouldn't be able to do the same thing, and one gets the book thrown at them while the other two have zero consequences.
Go read the link provided.
> a felony conviction of *any* type.
These things can typically be plead down to a lesser charge if its a first offense etc., so if it stuck as a felony conviction, there must've been serious circumstances (I'm speculating here, we don't know the details of the conviction).
1) will not or cannot spend $200 on an expungement, or
2) did something disgusting enough during the course of committing their felony that a judge cannot be persuaded to expunge their conviction record. (I just assume there's some judicial discretion with this in Kansas.)
As the grandparent post noted, there's no reason to assume the felony rules are relevant in this case.
However, preventing someone the ability to vote for life is something I'd agree with you if that's what you want to get upset about, but you're current argument falls flat
A person dispensing alcohol in many states and provinces is legally responsible for safety of their patrons. Argument might be made that in all cases they have some moral responsibility as well - although I understand there are people who will philosophically disagree with this and I think interesting discussion can be had there.
A person with "felony DUI" has proven to a tremendous (and usually repeated) degree that they cannot execute a key portion of what their liquor license actually entails.
So understanding slippery slope arguments and so on, in this one case, I'm not outraged at the regulation.
They can work in a bar with the conviction, just not run it.
According to the link provided above, no, you cannot work with alcohol in a license holding establishment with ANY felony.
It's possible the paper did break some laws.
The odds don't look good that they did (vs other motives), and even if they did the warrant and seizures were likely illegally extensive, but it's a possibility.
Either we care about actual facts and laws, or we judge that on the basis of who the accused is.
The correct action would be to:
- Support the paper financially so they can fund a robust defense
- Continue to press for an investigation into the original warrant and seizure
Police conducted the raid. The Marion County Attorney withdrew the search warrant on the basis of "'insufficient evidence'...to establish a 'legally sufficient nexus between this alleged crime and the places searched and the items seized'" [1].
Said attorney's brother, with his wife, "owns Marion’s Historic Elgin Hotel, where the restaurant Chef’s Plate at Parlour 1886 is located. The hotel’s liquor license is currently held by [the wife], but is only valid through Aug. 28. Newell owns Chef’s Plate and is seeking her own liquor license" [2]. (Newell is the proximate cause of this mess.)
At face value, this looks like a conflicted party asking a third party to take over a tainted investigation.
[1] https://www.kansascity.com/news/state/kansas/article27830017...
[2] https://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article2...
KBI is not a third party, they were active participants in the investigation leading to the raid, and released a supportive statement during the outrage over it.
(The third party that needs to get involved is the US DOJ.)
https://kansasreflector.com/2023/08/13/kbi-director-on-mario...
Or more generally we could just assume that the Ensey's and Newell are friends due to their business relationship, so the County Attorney was simply attempting to protect his friend from bad press.
Either that or against the people publishing the suppressed criminal history of the judge.
The judge who approved the search warrant is Magistrate Judge Laura Viar. Plot twist: that judge herself has 2 DUI arrests [1].
My first question when I heard about this raid was "what judge signed off on the search warrant and what were they told?" You can read the affidavit [2], which has since been withdrawn.
Any investigation should look at the judge who signed off on conducting a search of a newspaper, for which the bar should be extremely high.
[1]: https://www.npr.org/2023/08/17/1194392001/judge-who-signed-k...
[2]: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23919909-marion-coun...
“Have you ever driven while intoxicated?”
The examiner expects “No” and uses the reaction to gauge what a lie looks like for the remainder of the test. Never driven drunk? Screw you!
antipoligraph.org
You see entities like churches who systemically cover up and essentially defend child predators and you ask yourself why. Why didn't that organization "clean house" and report offenders to law enforcement? The usual answer given is they don't want the scandal and bad PR but that doesn't really hold water anymore given all the negative publicity surrounding, for example, the Mormon and Catholic churches around this issue.
What I think you'll find if you look deeper is the leadership is infected with a sufficient number of people who (as you put it) "get it". Religious doctrine complicates this as many such religions blame the sexual desire in men on women tempting them and yes, this can go to some horrific extremes.
Sexual harassment also seems to become endemic in organizations as those who should be holding underlines responsible for their bad behaviour also "get it" and don't see it as a problem.
Less horrific, I'm sure many on here have experienced bullying as a child. How many of you that have tried to report such problems and were told things like "boys will be boys" or "they're just playing" about abusive behavior, even serious abuse?
I've thought about this a lot: how do these people who "get it" find each other? I doubt it's ever verbally explicit. It seems to be a dark form of tribalism to identify people who are "one of us".
We had some significant cases in police departments recently (eg Antioch). This kind of clustering belies negligence, selection or both. This can get so bad that, for example, the LA County Sheriffs are essentially a collection of deputy gangs.
Jokes.
Assholes tend to make jokes at other peoples' expense. If someone else joins in on the off-color jokes, then you know they are the same kind of asshole you are.
[0] https://thehandbasket.substack.com/p/a-conversation-with-the...
They used the public records system to verify information they'd already received from an informant.
I assume its a one of the commercially available services that collect this information from the governments and sell it back to governments and non-governments, alike.
However, I don't know why the specific service actually matters. There's a word for a person not granted access to a system accessing the system without permission. It's in the name of this website
It's a Department of Revenue website where the user must select their reason for accessing the information and agree to terms of use per a Kansas law.
Off topic: Is it really necessary to have such a bureaucratic process for obtaining a liquor license? Why does having a DUI prohibit you from selling liquor? I remember talking to a local taco shop that wanted to sell beers for dining-in consumption. He had to put an ad out in the local paper saying how he was applying for a liquor license to give everyone notice and time to submit any comments to the ABC board.
The US is still really puritanical about alcohol, particularly liquor. It's still illegal to distill in many states, and craft distilleries have to bring per-state campaigns to have it legalized. You only have to go back a few decades to find it illegal to brew craft beer in many states.
This is all commercial, it's completely illegal to home-distill AFAIK.
Basically, prohibition was never fully rolled back, and it has taken ages for the restrictions to gradually be removed. Particularly in more-religious areas, there's still a deep moral disapproval of alcohol, particularly hard alcohol.
And in the South / Midwest: religion.
As to taxes, alcohol licensing and sales bring in revenue, so state limitation increases the value of a license.
As to religion, politicians can trumpet about how they're keeping vice limited in the area.
PS: Example irony: the Tennessee town where Jack Daniels is made (Lynchburg) is in a dry county (Moore).
An example is the Type 75 "brewpub" license in CA, which lets a brewery sell their beer on-premises. The distributors lobbied to smuggle in a requirement that a Type 75 has to have at least one beer on tap that is bought from a distributor and not brewed on-site. There's no defensible reason for this requirement, it's pure pork. Distributors just want to make it harder for brewpubs to enter the market and compete with them, and ensure they get a kickback from every brewpub that does open.
Someone who thinks it's okay to drive under the influence is unlikely to follow the laws around preventing over-consumption by their patrons.
My father repped a few bars early in his career as a lawyer (70s/80s). One condition: no pool cues.
> On Friday August 4, 2023 at or around 1851 hours I received an email from Eric Meyer. In. the email he states that he received a copy of someone's private Department of Revenue Records... I then contacted Marion City Administrator, Brogan Jones, and told him that an internal investigation should be conducted. Brogan stated he was aware of the Department of Revenue Record (DOR record) because City Council member~ Ruth Herbel, sent him a screenshot via email of the DOR record belonging to Kari Newell.
> My investigation revealed the letter was not stolen from her mailbox, rather it was downloaded directly from the Department of Revenue. The Department of Revenue advised the individuals who downloaded the information were Phyllis Zorn and "Kari Newell"... Downloading the document involved either impersonating the victim or lying about the reasons why the record was being sought.
(p5 of the affidavit).
This seems to clearly contradict your claim that the newspaper was using public records. I have no idea if a search and seizure warrant is a proportionate response to a private record being accessed like this, but whoever downloaded the document pretty clearly breached the law. Around here its common to think "if it's available by clicking through pages on the internet it's public" but that's not how the legal system tends to see things. In this case breaking a "pinkie promise that I have a legal reason to request this record" might be enough to give air cover for the search.
To be clear I'm not supporting this raid, it's a bad look and it's not obvious that it's reasonable to assume there would be evidence of a crime on those computers, but it does seem there is another side to the story here, and it's not as simple as the narrative that's been spun by the defendants.
Checkpointing the rest of my investigation; IANAL, here's what I found on the specific violation that someone committed:
The penalties for violating the DPPA are outlined in 18 U.S.C. § 2724. They include:
> Criminal Penalties: A person who knowingly violates the DPPA can be fined under title 18, United States Code, or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.
> Civil Penalties: The Attorney General may bring a civil action in a U.S. district court against any person or entity that violates the DPPA. The court may award:
> Actual damages, but not less than liquidated damages in the amount of $2,500; Punitive damages upon proof of willful or reckless disregard of the law; Reasonable attorneys' fees and other litigation costs; and Such other preliminary and equitable relief as the court determines to be appropriate. Private Right of Action: An individual driver may bring a civil action in a U.S. district court against a person or entity that violates the DPPA with respect to that driver's information. The court may award the same types of damages as in a civil action brought by the Attorney General.
Now again, you could argue that the Kansas DMV was negligent here, and the ToS that was clicked through was invalid? I'm not sure what precedent would say on that one. Interested in others' thoughts, if anyone has more experience here.
The affidavit specifically alleged "identity theft". That is, at best, a stretch. Under Kansas law it seems "obtaining personal information" might qualify but if they already had the record and were verifying it, what have they obtained? What's done with it matters too. It's one story if someone gets your PII for material gain (eg taking out a loan in your name) vs publishing that vs passing the information on to the police.
Also remember that the license record may not have been obtained illegally either. We don't know the true source.
You go on to mention DPPA. I'm not sure a County Sheriff is in any kind of position to investigate a Federal crime.
I do appreciate the deeper analysis on why the warrant doesn't hold up. It doesn't seem to me that you need to make any claim about the document being public in order to make it clear that the warrant was dubious; I think you could just retract that specific claim and then your argument would be on very strong ground.
> The KBI said it was asked by Marion police and Marion County Attorney Joel Ensey to join an investigation into accusations of “illegal access and dissemination of confidential criminal justice information.” Ensey will decide whether to file criminal charges after the KBI forwards the findings of its investigation.
https://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article2...
If These cops were properly checked by these higher authorities we wouldn't be in this situation to begin with.
Any system that treats non-violent drug offenders as hardcore criminals may be a system that is working correctly (as designed) but is not working justly.
(I say this as an opioid addict myself who will forever have to wrestle with the money I gave to violent cartels to support my habit.)
“Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” - H.L. Mencken
Regarding drug use: I do not think I have a right to tell other people what to put in their mouth / nose / whatever. It should be legal to use recreational drugs, just as it is legal to do many other very stupid things.
This is probably the highest profile situation that worked out as it should (with the PD firing the officers within 24 hours of the event). Oftentimes, this does not happen. Let's look at several high profile deaths:
Eric Garner - no indictments, no charges.
Michael Brown - County, DA, DOJ all declined to press charges.
Tamir Rice - all charges declined.
Laquan MacDonald - officer guilty of second degree murder, released 3 years in to a 7 year sentence.
Walter Scott - officer found not guilty of murder, guilty of violating federal civil rights. State dropped charges.
Freddie Grey - six officers charged, three cases dropped, three acquitted. DOJ declined charges.
Philando Castile - officer acquitted of manslaughter despite their own bodycam (but to your point, he was charged).
Justine Damond - shot after calling 911 to report being raped. Officer convicted of murder and manslaughter, murder overturned on appeal.
Breonna Taylor - no charges filed, and officials stated it was justified because someone else was firing at them. One officer convicted of negligence after shooting at entirely the wrong home.
Many of the above charges also only came about after significant public protest over PD/DA/DOJ initially declining any charges or denying there was any issue.
> As I write this, there is a real chance the former president will serve jail time after a fair trial.
You are entirely too optimistic. Realistically, at best, he will be placed under limited house arrest.
The number of occurrences is not important unless paired with total opportunity for occurrences.
Ten out of a hundred is pretty damn bad, but ten out of a billion is a statistical rounding error.
It's up to you to decide whether you want to make arguments to sway people by emotion and based on popular opinion or based on facts. To be clear, you may be completely right in this case (I don't know the statistics), but it's up to you to decide whether you're happier winning an argument or being right, because how you argue the point will often tend to put you in one of those categories from the beginning.
I'll go with cynical here.
Ensey maybe should be more cautious about opening that door. He may not like what walks through it...
The fact and the conditions under which the raid/search took place in the first place? Oh boy, that's problematic.
With the current US Court System, I expect this will be allowed if this raid ever gets to the Supreme Court.
The federal government isn't exactly the best people to go at when it comes to the protection of journalists ans whistle blowers...
What do you mean?
I passed 3 bar exams -- my default rule of thumb for the multiple-choice questions was that the Supreme Court would always side against the little guy when law enforcement was involved.
That's not accurate.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/11-564
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/533/27/
https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-290.ZS.html
https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/new-york-state-r...
Yes, but I've been following legal decisions since it was obvious there were severe issues with many local jurisdictions. The current SCOTUS seems to be pretty strong regarding rights lately, Roe being the exception.
>What does the reverse look like where the cases were ruled in favor of law enforcement?
I dunno, maybe point out some recent decisions you don't like, lets discuss them.
What do you mean?
* Lange v. California (police in hot pursuit of a suspect conduct warrantless entry) 9-0 in favor of the suspect
* United States v. Cooley 9-0 that tribal officers can stop non-natives on tribal land. Technically pro-police, but this really isn't so much a police issue as tribal sovereignty issue.
* Taylor v. Riojas 7-1 correctional officers did not in fact hold qualified immunity
In general, recent SCOTUS decisions have generally tended to land in favor of criminal defendants with regards to 4th Amendment violations. However, where SCOTUS has tended to land strongly against criminal defendants is in regards to post-conviction reconsideration, e.g. something like https://www.scotusblog.com/2023/06/court-blocks-pathway-for-....
> that will always side with the police
Both claims are false.
In short they want to legislate from the bench.
How so?
> departs strongly with jurisprudence as it has been understood for decades
How so?
> they want to legislate from the bench
How so?