A small town in Kansas is now the battleground for a First Amendment showdown after police raid the town's newspaper and the publisher's home.
The 98-year-old co-owner of a small Kansas newspaper collapsed and died one day after her home and the Marion County Record's office were raided by police, the publication said.
Joan Meyer had been "stressed beyond her limits and overwhelmed by hours of shock and grief," the Record said.
She died Saturday, the day after the entire five-member Marion Police Department and two sheriff's deputies arrived at her home and seized her computer, router and photographed bank statements belonging to her son, Eric Meyer, who is the paper's publisher.
Eric and Joan Meyer shared the same home. Eric Meyer said his mother was shocked and shaken by the raid of their house and sobbed as officers searched their belongings. She stopped eating and sleeping and died the next day, he said.
Officers also descended on the Record's office and grabbed personal cellphones belong to the staff, computers, the newspaper's file server and other documents and equipment, the paper said.
One reporter said Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody forcibly snatched her personal cellphone from her hand, injuring a finger that had previously been dislocated, the paper said.
Cody, in a statement, defended the raid and said that once all information has been made public, "the judicial system that is being questioned will be vindicated."
The raids drew immediate condemnation from media outlets across the country and transformed the small city of Marion, population 2,000, into a First Amendment battleground.
More than 30 news organizations, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Associated Press and CNN signed a letter from the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press on Sunday.
"The search warrant directed at the Marion County Record was significantly overbroad, improperly intrusive, and possibly in violation of federal law," the letter said.
"We urge you to immediately return any seized equipment and records to the newspaper; purge any such records retained by your Department; and initiate a full, independent, and transparent review into your Department’s actions," the letter concluded.
Publisher Eric Meyer said his staff's "first priority is to be able to publish next week. But we also want to make sure no other news organization is ever exposed to the Gestapo tactics" carried out in the raids, he said.
At issue, according to the search warrant, is a police investigation of identity theft and unlawful computer acts. Police said they were looking for documents and records pertaining to local restauranteur Kari Newell.
According to the warrant application, Newell had accused the newspaper of illegally obtaining about her and leaking it to City Council member Ruth Herbel.
Meyer said the accusation is false. According to the publisher, information was received about Newell, but "The Record did not seek out the information," the publisher wrote in an article for his publication. "Rather, it was provided by a source who sent it to the newspaper via social media and also sent it to Herbel."
Meyer said the paper confirmed the information, but didn't write a story about it, believing that the information had "been intentionally leaked to the newspaper as part of legal sparring between Newell and her estranged husband," the publisher wrote in his article.
Inside Edition Digital reached out for comment Monday to Marion County Judge Laura Viar, who signed off on the search warrants.
"Neither the judge nor the court can comment on a pending matter that could come before the court," replied a spokeswoman for the state's Office of Judicial Administration.
Chief Cody declined a request for comment from Inside Edition Digital on Monday, and referred all questions to the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, which he said was now the lead investigative agency on the case.
A request for comment was sent to the state agency, but Inside Edition Digital has not heard back.
