PHOTO: Police search the home of Joan Meyer, August 11, 2023.
Shoot if you must this old grey head
But spare your country’s flag, she said…
— from ‘Barbara Frietchie’ by John Greenleaf Whittier
At the height of the civil war in 1863, Whittier wrote the poem: ‘Barbara Frietchie’ in which he tells the tale of a 90-year-old widow living in Frederick, Maryland who defied the Confederate army.
According to the poem, when Confederate troops were marching through Frederick, Frietchie was flying an American flag on her house. When the confederate troops shot the flag down, she picked it up, waved it at the commanding general and spoke the words Whittier immortalized.
Probably, neither the actual event – nor Fritchie’s defiant words – ever occurred. But it was a good patriotic fable.
What isn’t fiction is the defiance by 98-year-old Joan Meyer of police in her home conducting an illegal raid on August 11.
Supported on her walker, Meyer orders the police out of her home — and it’s caught on her home surveillance video.
Meyer’s words, “Get out of my house, you assholes!” weren’t as poetic as those Whittier attributed to Fritchie. But they were just as apropos.
I’m a strong supporter of law enforcement — especially of the officers themselves who regularly put their lives on the line. But multiple tactically-accoutered officers to execute the search of the home of an enfeebled elderly woman to look for evidence of identity theft? Come on guys…
As a contributor for a local news publication, and an expert on search warrants, I’ve watched the events of the search of the office the Marion County Public Record, with particular interest. I’ve refrained from public comment on the incident, awaiting more details.
But the newly released video of Meyer’s futile efforts to defend her constitutional right to be “secure in [her] person, house, papers, and effects, against unreasonable search and seizure” demands I speak out.
Like the Pagosa Daily Post, the Record is a small local newspaper. It has been published in Marion, Kansas since 1874. Joan Meyer was one of the owners of the Record.
The newspaper was investigating the circumstances of the hiring of a new Marion police chief, and the handling of a DUI arrest of a local business owner. This sounds like just another episode of small-town politics — like the arrest of Rob Keating for DUI by an Archuleta deputy that I wrote about last year.
But the events in Marion took a sinister, and tragic, turn when Marion police decided to escalate the situation into, literally, a ‘federal case’ by violating the 4th Amendment to the United States Constitution — culminating in the death of Joan Meyer the day after the raid of her home.
Whether that raid actually caused her death may not be provable “within a reasonable degree of medical certainty”… but I doubt that will matter to a jury hearing the lawsuit that will no doubt follow. I suggest whomever insures the City of Marion against screw-ups by their police department get out their checkbook.
Also noteworthy about the search of the office of a small local news outlet is the coverage it has received from the national media. While there is justifiable outrage at the actions of the Marion police, that outrage by some in the media appears to be selective.
In a classic example of hypocritical lack of self-awareness, many of the same media pundits so offended (that the Marion police improperly used identity theft as a predicate to search the Record office) were cheerleaders for the unprecedented, unique, and improper, use of a public records law to predicate a search of Donald Trump’s home.
There is no conceptual difference between the impropriety of the two raids. But since the Mar-A-Lago raid only violated the rights of the great Satan Trump, while the Record raids violated the sanctity of the sacred media, the pundits can rationalize their hypocrisy.
I’ve previously written about the ‘Great Raid’ of Trump’s home, in which I opined why that raid violated the 4th Amendment. According the local prosecutor in Marion, the raid on Myers’ home – and the offices of the ‘Record’ – violated that Amendment as well.
It would be very difficult, and illegal – but not impossible – for Archuleta law enforcement to facilitate a raid my home here in Florida because of something I have written (or may in future write) in the Daily Post. But Bill Hudson doesn’t have distance (and State lines) to insulate him.
So Bill, I, and the other contributors to the Post, are at least indirectly effected by the idea of local law enforcement raiding a local news outlet because of something we may have written. It strikes at the very heart of the First Amendment.
I wonder if there will be a poem written about Joan Myers’ defiance? Though I can’t think of what would rhyme with “assholes”.
Gary Beatty lives between Florida and Pagosa Springs. He retired after 30 years as a prosecutor for the State of Florida, has a doctorate in law, is Board Certified in Criminal Trial law by the Florida Supreme Court, and is now a law professor.