"Seized" at The Santa Fe International Film Festival

 

Balancing the absurdity of small-town politics with the gravity of a constitutional crisis, SEIZED, set in the small town of Marion, Kansas, is thrust into the international spotlight after a police raid on the Marion County Record and the death of its 98-year-old co-owner,

Sunday, Oct. 18, 2026 2pm - info & tickets

SEIZED is a gripping, stranger-than-fiction investigative thriller that plunges audiences inside the troubling police raid on the Marion County Record. What begins as a shocking small-town incident quickly spirals into a national story, exposing how corruption, politics, and decades-long tensions turned a quaint Kansas community into a battleground over the First and Fourth Amendments. The film unfolds in real time through police body-cam and surveillance footage, revealing the raid’s chaos, the bombshells that followed, and the devastating personal toll on the newsroom, including the tragic death of its 98-year-old co-owner.

Director Sharon Liese allows the story to unfold with nuance, surprises, eccentric characters, and humor. By letting each voice speak for itself, she crafts a rare documentary in which sympathies shift moment to moment, revealing how truth, ego, and fear collide in real time. Blending the juicy intrigue of a classic muckraking narrative with a clear-eyed exploration of power, politics, and the fragility of a free press, SEIZED transforms a headline-grabbing event into a deeply human story that is urgent, unsettling, and impossible to ignore.

See article in the Santa Fe New Mexican: The First, Foremost: Documentary revisits police raid on a Kansas newspaper, shining a light on press freedom

Former police chief who launched a raid on a Kansas newspaper office and two homes is expected to be charged with obstruction of judicial process

 

Via KHSM 41

August 5, 2024

By: Jessica McMaster

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The former police chief who launched a raid on a Kansas newspaper office and two homes is expected to be charged with obstruction of judicial process, according to two special prosecutors who released their findings on the case Monday.

While the evidence that trickled out over the past year indicated no crimes were committed by any of the people accused by Cody, this is the first public acknowledgment by outside investigators that no crimes occurred, except for the one Cody is now accused of committing. --Click for link to article

LINK | Complete KSHB 41 News coverage of Marion newspaper raid

The New York Times:

Mr. Meyer said in an interview on Monday that he was still suing the police, the sheriff and others in connection with his mother’s death and the raid on the newspaper office. He said he was thankful that Mr. Cody would be charged, but said the prosecutors’ report “glossed over a lot of wrongdoing.”

Foot-dragging in Marion raid investigation should fill public with dread

 Via The Kansas Reflector

June 3, 3024

"I’ve had it.

Nearly 10 months after law enforcement officials raided the Marion County Record and two private residences, officials have yet to tell us the results of their investigations. That’s nearly a full year since a flagrant assault on free speech in Kansas, one signed off on by a list of city, county and state officials. True, a handful of individuals implicated in the scandal have left their roles in the intervening time. Lawsuits have been filed.

But we have not heard from those in charge. The Kansas Bureau of Investigation, perhaps realizing it had been compromised by involvement in the raid, passed the entire affair over to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. They originally said results would come in April. We’re at the beginning of June, and those results still haven’t come.

Our First Amendment rights, those shared by both journalists and the entire American public, deserve better."

Read the full article here.

And background here, and here.