On June 30, 2020, 622 voters in the 11th Judicial District set in motion the events that have resulted in the dismissal of homicide charges against the alleged murderers of a 10-month-old baby, historic sanctions against the prosecution in the high-profile Suzanne Morphew murder case — and an unprecedented hearing about whether the elected district attorney who oversaw both cases should keep her license to practice law.
At the time, Linda Stanley had been a licensed attorney for less than eight years. A Pueblo prosecutor for a few years, she never handled a murder before heading into private practice, and then on to the Department of Revenue as a hearing officer. In 2019, she was publicly censured for mishandling a client’s case. Her opponent, Thom LeDoux, was a long-time prosecutor who had previously served two terms as the elected DA, as well as president of the Colorado District Attorneys Council.
On that Tuesday in June nearly four years ago, Republicans in a heavily Republican jurisdiction that includes Fremont, Chaffee, Park and Custer Counties voted 52-48 for Stanley.
There are two cases that form the basis of the potentially career-ending trial in which Stanley finds herself: the Morphew murder and the murder of a 10-month-old baby just last year. The uber-high profile, “no body” Morphew case was Stanley’s first murder case. The combination of significant evidentiary challenges and intense and persistent media scrutiny are enough to get even the most seasoned elected prosecutors — like John Suthers (R), Stan Garnett (D), Michael Allen (Club Q, Letecia Stauch) and Michael Dougherty (King Soopers) — to tread vigilantly. Add to that mix a level of inexperience that looks less like “it’s my first rodeo,” and more like “what is a rodeo?” and the risk of bad — even unethical — decisions rises to such a level that, well, here we are.
The attorney regulation trial that has been taking place since Jan. 10 is about what Stanley said to the public, what she failed to do regarding the disclosure of evidence, her failure to properly supervise her attorneys, and her conduct “prejudicial to the administration of justice.” Ouch. That is a brutal accusation to have against the minister of justice (the DA).
Stanley’s failures and misjudgments are the product of staggering inexperience.
The two ethical rules that govern an attorney’s pre-trial publicity and extrajudicial — outside of the court — statements, are really about the Sixth Amendment. A presumption of innocence and right to a jury trial are of little consequence if the jury pool has already been poisoned by the public statements of the prosecutor who made the accusations. That is not fair and cannot be the path toward truth or justice.
Stanley went beyond these common-sense guardrails when she appeared in multiple media venues to discuss the Morphew case, including Morphew’s invocation of his Fifth Amendment rights and texting a podcaster “we got him” and other such statements. Far worse, in the case of the killed 10-month-old baby, Stanley participated in a locally televised interview — the kind prospective jurors might watch — during which she opined as to the heartlessness and motives of the accused child murderer. Egregious. Worse than Alvin Bragg’s pre-trial statements about Trump — and that says something.
It gets worse.
The Morphew case was mismanaged. Because Stanley had never personally prosecuted a murder case before, she was in no position to lead the prosecution team herself. She did not know that such cases must have defined roles. Despite bringing onboard well-experienced prosecutors from other jurisdictions, she failed to appoint a lead attorney. Stanley charged Morphew too soon, and likely over the objection of law enforcement. For a case that would undoubtedly be heavily dependent on expert witnesses, whoever was assigned responsibility for them utterly failed. The disclosure of expert witness information to Morphew’s team was so poorly handled, the judge struck (excluded) the vast majority of the prosecution’s expert witnesses. Unheard of.
When Stanley testifies this week, the single question she must be asked — the answer to which is dispositive of whether she ran afoul of well-known ethical rules — is a “complete the sentence” kind of question: “As the DA who publicly accused someone of the murder of an infant, I am entitled to tell the public, including potential jurors, about my speculated mind-set and motives of the killer, because____________.”
It gets much worse.
Two days after the assigned judge struck the first batch of prosecution experts, Stanley sought an investigation of him on the mere suspicion that he must have a domestic violence background, as explanation for why his rulings were so favorable toward Morphew. The Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office appropriately told her to pound sand, so she tasked her own chief investigator with interviewing the judge’s ex-wife. WTW? That is crazy thinking, like hiring your lover with limited prosecution experience to lead the Trump prosecution (looking at you Fani Willis). Where were the veteran prosecutors to scream “the emperor has no clothes!?”
It is unclear whether Suzanne Morphew’s killer will be brought to justice. It is crystal clear that the baby-killers will not; their case was dismissed because of Stanley’s “outrageous conduct.” That is the great injustice of what has happened.
Could all of this be prevented at the ballot box? Maybe not. Of the 23 DAs offices on the ballot this November, only six are contested, and only three have primaries to be decided next Tuesday. With so few options, how will voters ensure their prosecutor is the right one?
George Brauchler is the former district attorney for the 18th Judicial District and is a candidate for district attorney in the newly created 23rd Judicial District. He has served as an Owens Early Criminal Justice Fellow at the Common Sense Institute. Follow him on Twitter(X): @GeorgeBrauchler.
