Either the district attorney who oversaw the Barry Morphew alleged murder case was so loose-lipped with the press that she sunk the case or she had a First Amendment right to speak about certain aspects of the investigation.
“If you go down this route you are threatening First Amendment liberties,” said Linda Stanley’s attorney Steve Jensen during his closing arguments in her disciplinary hearing on Friday. “This is scary stuff indeed.”
Jensen accused the arm of the Colorado Supreme Court that is overseeing Stanley’s case of being a regulatory bureaucracy, pointing out that she is not going to run again.
“She has given up her career,” Jensen said.
But Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel lawyer Erin Kristofco argued that Stanley had no remorse for causing two first-degree murder cases to circle the drain. She asked the three-person panel who listened to the hearing to disbar Stanley.
The 9-day hearing over two weeks in Denver was similar to a trial with witnesses and competing sides, except there was no jury. Stanley’s fate will be decided by a three-person board including a presiding judge, an attorney and a regular citizen.
Talking with YouTubers
Kristofco hammered home the point that Stanley appeared on a YouTube show called Profiling Evil three times.
The very fact that she spoke on a show called Profiling Evil caused problems because it implied that Barry Morphew was evil, which Kristofco said was “basic stuff learned in DA school.”
Stanley is also accused of violating rules for public comments she made about an unrelated fatal child abuse case in which she said a man accused of killing his girlfriend’s child agreed to be a babysitter so he could “get laid.”
Charges against the Colorado man accused of killing the baby were dismissed because those comments, deemed prejudicial to a potential jury.
Stanley testified that she believed her comments to a KRDO reporter regarding the child abuse case were off the record.
Kristofco said that Stanley constantly missed discovery deadlines and was a poor leader who caused “massive confusion” among her prosecutorial team.
On the other hand, Stanley and two of her prosecutors testified that finding and retaining staff in rural jurisdictions was a challenge.
Stanley, who is the sitting 11th Judicial District Attorney until January 2025, could be disbarred, publicly or privately censured, suspended or the complaints against her could be dismissed. It will be at least 56 days before a decision is made.
The OARC brought the charges against Stanley after it discovered enough evidence to possibly support ethical violations.
At least five complaints were filed against Stanley including: one by the Fremont County sheriff; one by a concerned citizen who participated in the search for missing mom Suzanne Morphew; and one by Morphew’s defense attorney, Iris Eytan. Another of those complaints was filed by the judge, Ramsey Lama, who presided over the failed case in its final months. The final complaint was made by the Colorado District Attorneys’ Council — a state prosecutors’ professional group — it was revealed during the hearings.
The nine-day hearing OARC is unusual, and rare. The last district attorney to be called into question was Alonzo Payne, who agreed to be disbarred without a hearing and agreed that he was not ready to handle the position.
Ironically, the Morphew case is now in the hands of Payne’s replacement, Anne Kelly. She has had regular conversations with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, which is now overseeing the investigation.
The unsolved Morphew case
Suzanne Morphew, 49, went missing from her remote mountain home — about a 15-minute drive west of Salida — sometime on May 9-10 in 2020. Thousands of people turned out to look for her on horseback, on foot and in the streams and rivers.
Barry Morphew was arrested nearly a year later, on May 5, 2021, on suspicion of first-degree murder and tampering with physical evidence in her disappearance. Then-Judge Ramsey Lama agreed to dismiss all charges against Barry Morphew, without prejudice, just nine days before he was to stand trial in connection with the first-degree murder of his wife and mother of their two daughters. “Without prejudice” means that prosecutors can re-file charges in the future.
Suzanne Morphew’s remains were found in September, three years after she went missing. No new charges have been filed and the investigation is ongoing.
Stanley’s future
The hearing’s witnesses included two who worked on the Morphew case, and both of her one-time number-two prosecutors. Jeff Lindsay, who resigned halfway through the case, and Mark Hurlbert, who was brought in before the August 2021 evidentiary hearing, testified against her. Stanley’s former lead investigator, the former judge who dismissed the case in April 2022, and a podcaster to whom she made extra-judicial statements rounded out the witnesses.
Former U.S. Attorney and Attorney General John Suthers, and former Boulder District Attorney Stan Garnett, took the stand to condemn Stanley’s prosecutorial ethics.
The problem with the Morphew case, Garnett testified: “was the leadership, the lack of focus, the lack of accountability.”
Testimony in the hearing was often tedious, but being subpoenaed gave law enforcement officers who had never spoken publicly about the Morphew case a chance to reveal what was happening behind the scenes.
Some of them said that they didn’t know who was in charge.
Kristofco said that the purpose of the hearing was to protect the integrity of the legal profession.
Jensen countered that if Stanley harmed the two cases, she may have been negligent — but her actions were not intentional.
“These were negligent and not intentional violations,” he argued.
The OARC hearing board is not expected to decide on Stanley’s fate for at least 56 days.
