Colorado regulators have ruled that a district attorney who brought but ultimately dismissed criminal charges against a man accused of killing his missing wife cannot continue practicing law, finding his work in high-profile cases had “stuck” him in a prosecutorial role.
The panel ruled 2-1 on Tuesday to disqualify 11th District Attorney Linda Stanley from prosecuting Barry Morphew in the death of his wife, Suzanne Morphew, who was reported missing on Mother's Day in 2020. Barry Morphew posted videos on social media shortly after her disappearance pleading for her return. His arrest a year later garnered significant media attention.
Colorado prosecutor accused of conspiring against judge in Barry Morphy's dismissed murder case
A representative for Stanley's office, who declined to be named, said Wednesday that Stanley was unavailable for comment. Stanley's lawyer, former prosecutor Steven Jensen, said he and Stanley are considering whether to appeal to the Colorado Supreme Court. He noted that one of the dissenting commissioners said Stanley should be suspended, not disbarred.
A photo of Suzanne Morphy and Barry Morphy side by side. (Fox News/Chaffee County Sheriff's Office)
As a district attorney not accustomed to handling high-profile cases, Stanley didn't have as many resources as city prosecutors and had difficulty finding lawyers to take the cases, Jensen said.
“She was trying to act appropriately given the difficult circumstances she found herself in,” he said, repeating an argument he made to the commission during a two-week hearing in June into Stanley's conduct.
A final order banning Stanley from practicing law would normally be issued 35 days after the ruling, but the ruling states Stanley may seek a delay to allow for an appeal.
Stanley dropped his charges in Suzanne Morphew's death in April 2022 after a judge barred him from calling key witnesses, saying the prosecution had repeatedly failed to follow rules on presenting evidence to the defense. That evidence included DNA from an unidentified man found in Suzanne Morphew's SUV. The DNA matched partial profiles found in three unsolved sexual assault cases.
At a June hearing, lawyers from the Office of Solicitor Regulation and Counsel, the office that oversees solicitor conduct, likened Stanley's conduct in the case to that of a ship's captain who fails to show up on the bridge.
The Panel agreed and adopted this analogy.
“Defendant's failure to take command at a critical juncture in the prosecution, despite warnings that he would face difficulties, set in motion the chain of events that led to the stranding of the first-degree murder case,” the court said in its opinion.
The committee found that after prosecutors were barred from violating the rules of evidence, Judge Stanley unsuccessfully launched a baseless criminal investigation to remove the presiding judge from the case. When that investigation turned up nothing, Judge Stanley asked that the case against Morphew be dismissed, the committee said.
Stanley was also found to have made unethical comments about the Morphew case on a chat forum for the true crime documentary “Profiling Evil,” including comparing it to cases of people who were convicted of murder even though their bodies were never found.
Suzanne Morphew's body was discovered 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, where authorities were investigating a separate case. An autopsy report released in April ruled her death a homicide but listed the “cause of death as undetermined.” A mixture of drugs used to tranquilize wild animals was found in one of the 49-year-old woman's bones, but there were no signs of trauma, the report said.
The prosecutor in the Colorado area where the body was found, 12th Judicial District Attorney Ann Kelly, said her office is cooperating with the investigation. No new charges have been announced.
Click here for the FOX News App
The committee also found that Stanley violated ethics rules with comments he made in a fatal child abuse case, in which he told a reporter that a man suspected of killing his girlfriend's 10-month-old child had agreed to babysit “in order to have sex.” Jensen said Stanley believed his comments to the reporter were informal.
Following Stanley's statement, charges were dropped against the man and his girlfriend.
