Magistrate’s exoneration appealed

Topeka resident Keri Strahler has filed an appeal of the Kansas Commission on Judicial Conduct’s decision that Magistrate Judge Laura Viar was not incompetent when she signed warrants, later disavowed, to search the Record newsroom and two homes in August, 2023.

In its initial ruling on the case earlier this year, the commission suggested that Viar had committed no actionable offense but urged her in the future to research laws and read warrant applications before signing them.

“Too many people were traumatized by Magistrate Viar’s ignorance, and there should be consequences,” Strahler wrote to the commission in a letter dated Friday.

She recounted how newspaper co-owner Joan Meyer died of stress-related cardiac arrest a day after the raid and how reporter Phyllis Zorn suffered grand mal seizures as a result.

Strahler’s letter states that Viar’s ignorance of the law — the federal Privacy Protection Act and Kansas Shield Law, which severely limit police powers to search newsrooms — should not be a valid defense.

The question of whether to retain Viar as a magistrate judge will be on the ballot Nov. 5 but apparently only in Morris County, not Marion County.

Strahler also is asking Governor Laura Kelly to launch an independent investigation of the raid.