DA who oversaw abandoned prosecution of Colorado man in wife’s death should be disbarred, panel says

DENVER (AP) — Colorado state regulators have ruled that a district attorney who brought criminal charges that were ultimately dismissed against a man accused of killing his missing wife should no longer be allowed to work as a lawyer, finding that her management of the high-profile case resulted in the prosecution “running aground.”

The panel issued a 2-1 ruling Tuesday to disbar 11th District Attorney Linda Stanley, who prosecuted Barry Morphew in the death of his wife Suzanne Morphew, who was reported misssing on Mother’s Day in 2020. Barry Morphew had posted a video on social media pleading for his wife’s return soon after she vanished. His arrest a year later prompted widespread media attention.

A representative of Stanley’s office who did not provide her name said Wednesday that Stanley had no comment. Stanley’s lawyer, former prosecutor Steven Jensen, said he and Stanley were 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 disbarred.

As a rural district attorney not accustomed to handling high-profile cases, Stanley did not have as many resources as prosecutors in urban areas and also had difficulty finding attorneys to work on the case, Jensen said.

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“She was trying to conduct herself in appropriate fashion under the difficult circumstances she was presented with,” he said, echoing an argument he made before the panel when it held a two-week hearing on Stanley’s conduct in June.

A final order that would prevent Stanley from working as a lawyer is normally issued 35 days after a ruling, but the opinion said that Stanley can ask for a delay to allow her to appeal.

Stanley dropped the charges in Suzanne Morphew’s death in April 2022 after a judge barred prosecutors from calling key witnesses for repeatedly failing to follow rules for turning over evidence to the defense. That included DNA from an unknown male found in Suzanne Morphew’s SUV. The DNA corresponded with partial profiles found in three unsolved sexual assault cases.

Lawyers for the office that oversees attorney conduct, the Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel, compared Stanley’s conduct in the case at a June hearing to a ship’s captain who didn’t appear on the boat’s bridge.

The panel agreed, adopting the analogy.

“Respondent’s absence at the helm during key phases of the prosecution — even when she was warned that it faced rough waters — led to a series of events that ended with the first-degree murder case running aground,” it said in its opinion.

The panel found that after prosecutors were barred from violating evidence rules, Stanley launched a groundless criminal investigation into the presiding judge in a failed attempt to have him removed from the case. After that probe failed to turn up anything, Stanley asked for the case against Morphew to be dropped, the panel said.

It also found that Stanley made unethical statements about the Morphew case, including comparing it to the cases of people convicted of murder even where no body was found in a chat forum for the “Profiling Evil” true crime podcast.

Suzanne Morphew’s remains were found in September 2023 in a remote area of central Colorado more than 40 miles (65 kilometers) south of her home in the mountains near Salida, Colorado, as authorities were pursuing a different case. An autopsy report released in April labeled her death a homicide but said she died by “undetermined means.” A cocktail of drugs that are used to tranquilize wildlife was found in one of the 49-year-old woman’s bones, but there was no indication of trauma, the report said.

The prosecutor for the part of Colorado where the body was found, 12th Judicial District Attorney Anne Kelly, has said her office was assisting in the investigation. No new charges have been announced.

The panel also found Stanley violated ethical rules for comments she made in a fatal child abuse case in which she told a reporter that a man accused of killing his girlfriend’s 10-month-old child agreed to be a babysitter so he could “get laid.” Jensen said Stanley believed her comments to the reporter were off the record.

Charges against the man and his girlfriend were dismissed because of Stanley’s comments.