Left: Barry Morphew leaves a Fremont County court building in Canon City, Colo., with his daughters, Macy, left, and Mallory, after charges against him in the presumed death of his wife were dismissed in April 2022 (Jerilee Bennett/The Gazette via AP). Center: Suzanne Morphew (Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office). Right: 11th Judicial District Attorney Linda Stanley (KKTV).
The Colorado district attorney remembered for helming the murder prosecution of Barry Morphew in the Mother’s Day 2020 disappearance and death of his wife Suzanne Morphew only to drop the case, face a lawsuit, and face disciplinary proceedings has “gravely abused her position of trust” and should be disbarred for misconduct, a board has determined.
11th Judicial District Attorney Linda Stanley got herself in hot water by going on YouTube channels to talk about the Suzanne Morphew case — in which there are still no new arrests despite the discoveries of her body and “unknown male DNA” — but also by going on the news and speaking about a case involving a boyfriend and girlfriend who had not yet gone to trial for the alleged Motel 6 murder of a 10-month-old baby boy.
In the latter case, which went on to be dismissed, Stanley commented in a news interview that then defendant William Jacobs was “watching that baby so he can get laid.”
Even more alarmingly, the hearing board’s order said, Stanley’s “decision to coordinate an in-house investigative interview” of the ex-wife of Ramsey Lama, the then presiding judge in Barry Morphew’s case, in an apparent effort to “uncover information” about his divorce so he might have to recuse himself or other be disqualified from the Morphew case.
Before the case was tossed, Lama was particularly taken aback that exculpatory information about “unknown male DNA” found on “various items of the crime scene: the interior cushion of the bike helmet, Mrs. Morphew’s bike, the glovebox and back seat of Mrs. Morphew’s Range Rover” was not disclosed to Barry Morphew’s defense for two months, even as that DNA “partially matched DNA found in three out-of-state unsolved sexual assault investigations: Tempe, Phoenix, and Chicago.”
According to the order disbarring Stanley, a punishment that will not go into effect for at least 35 days and a sanction she can appeal, these episodes involving the judge, failures to “adequately supervise the Morphew prosecution,” and the out of court statements about Jacobs, were “serious” and showed the DA’s office is a ship without a captain.
“In their opening statement, the People likened Respondent’s handling of the Morphew prosecution to that of a ship’s captain who never appeared on the bridge. In some ways, this analogy is apt,” the board said. “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.”
“The analogy captures Respondent’s dereliction of her duty as an elected official and the top prosecutor in her district. In that role, her obligation was not to win or to protect her reputation but to see justice done. Instead, her unjustifiable extrajudicial statements in the Jacobs and Crawford cases led to the opposite result, prejudicing each criminal defendant and torpedoing the criminal cases against them,” the order continued. “And her baseless decision to launch an in-house investigation of a judge presiding over a case that was close to trial prejudiced the administration of justice and abused her position of trust. She must be disbarred.”
At least one former DA in Colorado during an interview with KKTV liked the sanction to a “death sentence” for a lawyer.
Read the order here.
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