“Where are all the good people who are supposed to stop this from happening?”

Marion County Record co-owner Joan Meyer asked that question repeatedly before her death — a day after local police illegally and unconstitutionally raided her community newspaper and home in response to the Record’s reporting about a local restaurant owner’s drunk driving convictions.

Alabama reporter Don Fletcher and newspaper publisher Sherry Digmon might have asked themselves that same question.

Last year, the two were arrested on sham charges for allegedly revealing grand jury secrets. Digmon, who also served on the local school board, was charged with violating an Alabama ethics law as well. It’s yet another unfortunate effort to make journalism a crime and silence reporters.

The bogus criminal investigation came after Atmore News, the local newspaper co-owned by Digmon, published Fletcher’s article about a school board meeting and a subpoena seeking school board financial records from the previous year. The subpoena was issued by Escambia County District Attorney Stephen Billy.

Four months after the arrests, Billy admitted to personal and professional conflicts of interest in the cases, and removed himself as prosecutor. The state attorney general’s office dropped the charges soon after.

Now, Digmon and Fletcher, joined by a school board member and a district employee also caught up in the investigation, have filed a federal lawsuit against Billy, Sheriff Heath Jackson, and “allies” for conspiring to violate their First and Fourth amendment rights.

On the surface, the attack on Atmore News — like that on the Marion County Record — may appear limited to a few law enforcement officials abusing their power. But in both cases, a little digging reveals politically motivated multiparty schemes.

The similarities between officials’ arrest of Fletcher and Digmon and the raid on the Record are startling and informative. After the Marion raid, the response and backlash seemed to make a repeat unlikely soon. But just months later, the Atmore News found itself at the center of a similar attack on press freedom.

Paper’s punishment motivated by politics

Like the former police chief and mayor in Marion, who allegedly sought both to punish the Record for investigating them and attack a political rival, local politics were at the heart of Billy and Jackson’s campaign against Atmore News, according to Digmon and Fletcher’s lawsuit.

The lawsuit claims that the two men took an “unusual personal interest” in the employment of Michele McClung, the local superintendent, and carried out a “convoluted conspiracy of retaliation” ripe with press freedom violations and a complete disregard for state and federal law.

Billy allegedly used his power as DA to protect McClung’s job after an audit revealed issues with her management of financial records.

Among other actions, Billy sent what the lawsuit calls a “threatening letter” to school board members ahead of a meeting about McClung’s employment. At the meeting, he also threatened retaliation against board members who opposed McClung — including Digmon — claiming, “I don’t control much, but I do control the grand jury of Escambia County.”

Fletcher’s reporting on this local political spat in the Atmore News triggered the later arrests of Fletcher and Digmon.

Of course, it is plainly unconstitutional to arrest journalists for publishing truthful information on matters of public concern — even if public officials don’t like what was printed. Grand jury secrecy laws bind grand jurors and witnesses, not journalists.

Yet Fletcher and Digmon weren't only arrested, they were ordered, as a condition of bail, to stop reporting on local criminal investigations.

Bad legal theory behind illegal search warrant

Police also obtained a warrant to seize and search Digmon’s cellphone. The warrant was based on allegations that she and another board member had private conversations about the board’s vote on McClung’s employment and the vote’s outcome in violation of Alabama’s public records law.

This is yet another startling similarity to the Record case. There, Marion County police relied on a similarly nonsensical theory — connected to a Record journalist’s alleged misuse of public records — to justify an illegal search warrant granting them authority for a newsroom raid.

Digmon and Fletcher’s lawsuit, meanwhile, alleges that the search and seizure of Digmon’s cellphone violates the Fourth Amendment. They’re right. The Fourth Amendment requires probable cause to obtain a warrant — an element absent from this investigation.

There are many reasons why it doesn’t make sense to issue a search warrant for a journalist’s phone based on an alleged violation of the Alabama Open Records Act.

For starters, the act isn’t a criminal law. Even if it was, the law doesn’t apply to phone calls. And the Alabama Open Meetings Act only applies to government meetings when a quorum is present — which it isn’t during a phone call between just two school board members.

All of that should have been obvious to the officer who sought the warrant and especially the judge who signed off on it.

Police and the judge should also have known that the Privacy Protection Act of 1980 guards against searching and seizing materials from journalists unless they are under investigation for a crime.

Sham criminal charges

Police in Marion used laws prohibiting identity theft and unlawful use of a computer as an excuse to raid the Record’s newsroom, based on sham allegations about what the laws prohibited.

Similarly, Billy and his allies arrested Fletcher and Digmon under Alabama’s grand jury secrecy statute based on made-up facts and bad faith interpretations of the law.

Police claimed that Fletcher and Digmon revealed grand jury secrets by reporting on the subpoena issued to the school board. It turns out there never was a grand jury. The lawsuit explains that the subpoena Fletcher reported on was instead issued by Billy under a provision in the law that gives the DA power to do so when a grand jury is not in session.

Even if a grand jury had issued the subpoena, it isn’t illegal for a journalist to report on it when they obtain it lawfully. Grand jury secrecy laws bind grand jurors and witnesses, not journalists.

Neither Fletcher nor Digmon were bound by any secrecy laws, privy to any grand jury secrets, or part of a grand jury in any capacity. It’s simply not a crime to disclose to the public information that powerful people want hidden.

There must be consequences

Billy has announced his plan to retire at the end of the year, but he shouldn’t be allowed to remain DA of Escambia County for a moment longer after his repeated and blatant disregard of press freedom.

He knew what he was doing and has acknowledged his conflicts of interest. But without accountability, these kinds of attacks on the press become normalized and will happen more often.

That’s where Fletcher and Digmon’s lawsuit comes in. Holding Billy and others who violated their constitutional rights accountable through civil liability will help make other public officials think twice before targeting the press as part of petty political schemes or to retaliate against critical reporting.

It’s also where the criminal justice system has a potential role. In Marion County, former Police Chief Gideon Cody faces a felony charge for his actions after the raid. Similarly, Alabama state officials should conduct an independent investigation of Billy and others who participated in the scheme against Fletcher and Digmon, and prosecutors should consider whether they broke state law. Billy should also be disciplined by the Alabama State Bar, regardless of his upcoming retirement.

Unfortunately, the good people weren’t there to stop this from happening to the Marion County Record or Atmore News, as Joan Meyer had hoped. Now, we need honest officials and judges to make sure these attacks on small-town newspapers and press freedom cease. Joan Meyer’s memory deserves as much.