Judge who signed off on raid of Kansas newspaper is facing a complaint about the decision

roguetrick@kbin.social to News@lemmy.world – 512 points – Judge who signed off on raid of Kansas newspaper is facing a complaint about the decision | CNN
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The judge who signed off on a search warrant authorizing the raid of a newspaper office in Marion, Kansas, is facing a complaint about her decision and has been asked by a judicial body to respond, records shared with CNN by the complainant show.

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Few days old but I didn't see this on search. It likely won't go anywhere but I found the dig on the judge's mental capacity to be hilarious.

The complaint requests the Kansas Commission on Judicial Conduct to review “Viar’s mental capacity in her decision to seemingly circumvent federal and state law” when she signed off on the search warrant for the newspaper office

I don't know about going nowhere. The higher courts generally get pretty grumpy about lower courts going mask-off like this.

Nothing for them to quash at this point since the county attorney withdrew the warrant. I don't really forsee her getting impeached or being declared without capacity and she has qualified immunity for civil damages. Hope she doesn't get reelected.

Edit: unless she's shown to have signed off without the affidavit. That could get her into trouble. I don't think they can prove that though.

If the warrant was withdrawn, doesn't that imply that the police who executed the withdrawn warrant were illegally searching and seizing?

The penalty for searching without a warrant is that evidence acquired is inadmissible. Sometimes. Sometimes not even that. Typically, that's fucking it. So it doesn't really matter that the search was illegal once the property is returned. Mostly, the penalties for the police are just political ones.

If there are some provable damages, the person who's civil rights were damaged might be able to sue, though with qualified immunity even that is a very, very uphill battle. SCOTUS rules against plaintiffs in cases like that routinely because the SCOTUS is very, very pro-police. They routinely rule that making things harder for the police & prosecutors is too high a price to pay for protecting civil rights. See, for example, Van Buren vs US or Arizona v. Gant.

No. It means the prosecutors won't be further pursuing the case. The warrant is legal process, returnable to the judge who signed it. If a party unilaterally wants to end a legal process it began, the procedure is to file a withdrawal.

I thought nobody could find the affidavit. Did that show up?

It finally did yeah. Seemed to have been filed a bit late. Chief of police wrote it himself. He's also the one who assaulted one of the reporters personally, turns out. He'll have no qualified immunity.

Wait, cops assaulting people without cause is not an official act? /s

It was filed with the application for the warrant. The judge wouldn't have granted the warrant without one.