Colorado State Regulator The court has ruled that a district attorney who brought criminal charges against a man accused of killing his missing wife that were ultimately dismissed should no longer be allowed to serve as a lawyer, after it found that his management of the high-profile case resulted in a “failure” for the prosecution.
The panel ruled 2-1 on Tuesday to fire 11th District Attorney Linda Stanley, who had prosecuted the case. Barry Morphew In the case of the death of his wife Suzanne Morphew, who was reported missing on Mother’s Day in 2020. Barry Morphew had posted a video on social media shortly after his wife went missing, in which he pleaded for his wife’s return. His arrest a year later attracted media attention.
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A representative for Stanley’s office, who declined to be named, said Wednesday that Stanley had no comment. Stanley’s attorney, former prosecutor Steven Jensen, said he and Stanley are considering whether to appeal the ruling to the Colorado Supreme Court, noting that one dissenting member of the panel said Stanley should be suspended rather than fired.
Photo of Suzanne Morphew and Barry Morphew together. (Fox News/Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office)
As a rural district attorney not accustomed to handling high-profile cases, Stanley didn’t have the same resources as prosecutors in urban areas, Jensen said, and he also had difficulty finding an attorney to work on the case.
“She was attempting to behave appropriately under the difficult circumstances before her,” he said, repeating arguments he made to the panel during a two-week hearing into Stanley’s conduct in June.
A final order barring Stanley from practicing as a lawyer is normally issued 35 days after a verdict, but the opinion said Stanley could request an extension of the deadline to appeal.
Stanley dropped charges in the death of Suzanne Morphew in April 2022 after a judge barred prosecutors from calling key witnesses for repeatedly failing to follow rules about handing over evidence to the defense, including DNA from an unidentified male found in Suzanne Morphew’s SUV. The DNA matched a partial profile found in three unsolved sexual assault cases.
Attorneys from the Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel, the office that oversees the conduct of lawyers, compared Stanley’s conduct in the case at a hearing in June to that of a ship’s captain who did not appear on the boat’s bridge.
The Panel agreed, adopting this precedent.
“The defendant’s absence during crucial stages of the prosecution – even when he was warned that the case was going through a difficult phase – led to a series of events that culminated in first degree murder case It said in its opinion, “This aircraft is stranded.”
The panel found that after prosecutors were barred from violating evidence rules, Stanley launched an unfounded criminal investigation against the presiding judge in an attempt to have him removed from the case. After the investigation turned up nothing, Stanley sought to drop the case against Morphew, the panel said.
Stanley was also found to have made unethical statements about the Morphew case, including comparing it to the cases of people convicted of murder in the chat forum of the “Profiling Evil” true crime podcast, even though no body had been found.
Suzanne Morphew’s remains were found in September 2023 in a remote area of central Colorado, 40 miles (65 kilometers) south of her home in the mountains near Salida, Colorado, as authorities were investigating a separate case. An autopsy report released in April ruled her death a homicide but said she died of “undetermined causes.” A cocktail of drugs used to tranquillize wildlife was found in one of the 49-year-old’s bones, but there was no sign of trauma, the report said.
Attorney Anne Kelly, the 12th Judicial District attorney for the part of Colorado where the body was found, said her office was assisting in the investigation. No new charges have been announced.
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The panel also found that Stanley violated ethics rules for comments he made in a fatal child abuse case in which he told a reporter that a man accused of killing his girlfriend’s 10-month-old baby had agreed to care for the child so he could “have sex with her.” Jensen said Stanley believed his comments to the reporter were off the record.
Stanley’s comments led to the charges against the man and his girlfriend being dismissed.
