Decision on former Morphew prosecutor's fate delayed

The arm of the Colorado Supreme Court that oversees the state's attorneys has pushed back Friday's deadline to decide the fate of the embattled former prosecutor in the Morphew case.

Linda Stanley, the sitting 11th Judicial District Attorney, could be disbarred, publicly or privately censured, or acquitted. She is accused of professional misconduct associated with the Morphew case and also with a Fremont County first-degree murder case against a man accused of killing a 10-month old baby.

Charges in that case were dismissed in May after Stanley did a television interview, in which she disparaged the suspect. She told the disciplinary court that she was under the impression that her comments were off-the-record.

Complaints filed against Stanley claimed she spoke too freely with the media, specifically YouTubers, had "continual discovery violations and was a poor leader."

The state's Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel had brought the charges against Stanley after it discovered enough evidence to possibly support ethical violations.

Complaints were made by a former judge, a citizen, a county sheriff and Morphew's defense attorney.

Stanley's fate will be decided by three-person board, including a presiding judge, an attorney and a regular citizen.

In a document filed Aug. 5, Presiding Disciplinary Judge Bryon Large wrote that the delay would be brief. He did not give a new decision date.

"The length of the hearing, the volume of evidence and given the Hearing Board's strong interest in issuing a thorough and detailed written opinion" the 56-day deadline could not be met, he said.

During opening statements, a lawyer for Colorado’s Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel described Stanley as an absent leader who failed to steer the case and let it crash.

“This is a case about a ship with a captain who never manned the bridge,” said attorney Jonathan Blasewitz, alleging Stanley violated attorney conduct rules.

On the other hand, Stanley's attorney, former prosecutor Steve Jensen, pointed out that the district had few resources and was expected to serve a four-county area.

The 11th Judicial District includes Chaffee, Fremont, Custer and Park counties.

Stanley was at the helm of the Morphew case from the time she took office in January 2021 only to see it implode with a dismissal 16 months later. This spring, she told The Denver Gazette that she had handed it to the neighboring 11th Judicial District, where Suzanne Morphew's remains were found a year ago.

Suzanne Morphew was reported missing by her daughters and a neighbor on Mother's Day weekend 2020. Her husband, Barry Morphew, was arrested for her murder a year later, on May 5, 2021.

He is now a free man and moved from Colorado. On Wednesday, he has a motions hearing in his civil lawsuit against Chaffee County, in which he is suing more than a dozen investigators for their role in investigating and prosecuting him.

Morphew's lawsuit against law enforcement authorities alleged that they fabricated evidence against him and withheld evidence favorable to him, among other things.

New eyes on the Morphew case

The new eyes on the star-crossed case belong to Anne Kelly of the 12th Judicial District Attorney's Office. The district is in the San Luis Valley area where Morphew’s remains were discovered. She has been consulting on Morphew's murder with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, according to a CBI press release.

The four-year-old case took a sharp turn when Suzanne Morphew's autopsy results came back positive for chemicals in her bones that do not appear naturally in humans, according to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation and the official autopsy report.

Specifically, a source who wished to remain anonymous stated that the tests came from the bone marrow of Suzanne Morphew's femur.

Butorphanol, azaperone and medetomidine — the chemicals found in Morphew's femur, according to the report — are used by biologists, wildlife officers and hunters to anesthetize large-sized animals such as deer, bear, moose and horses. The report described the compound as an "injectable chemical immobilizer" for wildlife, the symps of which can be reversed.

Barry Morphew was known to use those chemicals to subdue deer in order to get them into trailers for paid hunting expeditions, relatives told The Denver Gazette. He also told investigators that he routinely used the chemical mixture to immobilize deer before he removed their antlers.

The chemical solution is often sold in kit form with the acronym "BAM."

Attempts to reach Stanley and her attorney, Steve Jensen, and Morphew's attorney, Iris Eytan, went unanswered.