Eleventh Judicial District Attorney Linda Stanley will be disbarred for ethical violations and misconduct that largely happened during the high-profile prosecution of Barry Morphew in the 2020 murder of his wife, a Colorado disciplinary board ruled Tuesday.
State disciplinary authorities found Stanley made inappropriate comments to the media during the since-dismissed Morphew case, did not adequately supervise the prosecution of the case, caused numerous discovery violations and initiated a baseless, retaliatory investigation into the judge on the case. She also made inappropriate comments to the media in an unrelated case, the board found.
“…Nothing short of disbarment would adequately address respondent’s betrayal of the public trust,” the three-member board led by Presiding Disciplinary Judge Bryon M. Large wrote in its 83-page disciplinary order, published Tuesday.
Stanley will become the first sitting district attorney to be involuntarily disbarred in Colorado in recent memory if the sanction is finalized. Alonzo Payne, former district attorney in the 12th Judicial District, agreed to a disbarment in 2022 and resigned as district attorney after violating crime victims’ rights.
Neither Stanley nor her attorney immediately returned requests for comment Tuesday. She previously argued her conduct was within the bounds of ethical rules and that the allegations against her were baseless.
Stanley’s disbarment will take effect in roughly 35 days, though she can appeal the decision and request that the disbarment be delayed while that appeal is pending. Once disbarred, she cannot serve as elected district attorney for the 11th Judicial District, which includes Chaffee Custer, Fremont and Park counties.
Gov. Jared Polis will appoint someone to be district attorney to fill the vacancy when the disbarment is final. The Colorado Attorney General’s Office can also send someone to head the district attorney’s office until such an appointment is made, spokesman Lawrence Pacheco said.
Stanley’s term as district attorney would have expired at the end of the year; her replacement, Republican Jeff Lindsey, is running unopposed for the district attorney position in the November general election.
Tuesday’s disciplinary decision comes three months after Stanley faced allegations of professional misconduct during a two-week disciplinary hearing in June.
The Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel, which handles attorney discipline for professional misconduct, brought the allegations against Stanley in October, and the case proceeded all the way to a public disciplinary hearing, which is highly unusual for a sitting district attorney.
In a statement Tuesday, Jessica Yates, who heads the Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel, called the disbarment ruling a “just result.”
Much of the disciplinary hearing centered on Stanley’s handling of the case against Morphew, who she charged with murder in 2021, a year after his wife, Suzanne Morphew, 49, disappeared from the family’s Chaffee County home on May 10, 2020.
State regulators accused Stanley of making inappropriate comments to members of the media and on a YouTube true-crime show about Morphew’s case. The disciplinary board found that her appearance on the online show “Profiling Evil” was unfair to Morphew in part because her comments that she “stared him down… ‘every chance (she) got’” during his preliminary hearing.
Stanley also posted extensive comments on the YouTube video, using her own name and a photo of herself. The disciplinary board found many of the comments “demeaned or personally attacked” other commenters. She claimed during her disciplinary hearing that those comments were made in a personal capacity, not in a professional capacity as elected district attorney.
Stanley also texted the YouTuber about evidence in the Morphew case, telling him at one point that prosecutors believed Morphew strangled his wife and that it couldn’t have been in the family’s hot tub, which appeared to have been in a state of disuse.
“We know it wasn’t bloody,” she texted him in 2021.
Stanley dropped all charges against Morphew in 2022 after a judge sanctioned prosecutors for violating discovery rules. Morphew has maintained his innocence and is not facing any charges in connection with his wife’s death. State attorneys argued during the disciplinary hearing that the prosecution was a “debacle” because of Stanley’s poor leadership.
Morphew’s attorney, Iris Eytan, said Tuesday that unethical prosecutors are a “persistent epidemic” across Colorado and the United States.
“Fortunately in this case, the right thing happened,” she said of Stanley’s impending disbarment. “This unethical prosecutor can no longer harm and abuse her power and it ensures the public will be safe. This is absolutely the right outcome and I could say this is a completely appropriate outcome for this kind of breach of the public trust.”
Investigators in September 2023 discovered Suzanne Morphew’s body in a shallow grave near Moffat, and a coroner later determined her death to be a homicide, finding she died with a cocktail of animal tranquilizers in her body. The investigation into Suzanne’s killing is now being handled by 12th Judicial District Attorney Anne Kelly, since her body was found in that jurisdiction.
Eytan said Tuesday that prosecutors should move on from her client.
“It’s time to let go of the Morphew prosecution,” she said. “Any prosecution of Mr. Morphew would be an extension of this unethical behavior. How can we condemn Mr. Morphew after the lengths that this prosecutor’s office and Ms. Stanley went to obliterate the presumption of innocence in the eyes of the public in Colorado and in the United States?”
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