A defense attorney on Tuesday accused the prosecutors who brought a first-degree murder charge against Barry Morphew of misrepresenting evidence, withholding exculpatory evidence from the defense and committing numerous ethical violations in the case.
Attorney Iris Eytan called for state authorities to discipline or disbar 11th Judicial District Attorney Linda Stanley and six other prosecutors involved in the case in an 86-page request for investigation filed with the Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel last month and made public Tuesday.
Stanley later dropped all charges against Morphew. She did not return requests for comment Tuesday.
The Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel, or OARC, is the state office responsible for investigating professional misconduct by attorneys. Eytan’s complaint is one of several recently lodged against Stanley that currently are under investigation by the office.
“This is not a series of oopsies or mistakes; there were too many not to be intentional, willful, and/or a knowing pattern of discovery and ethical violations,” Eytan wrote. “These prosecutors still believe they have done nothing wrong. They will continue to violate their ethical obligations, harm other people, until and unless the OARC disciplines them, up to and including disbarment.”
Eytan on Tuesday also called for more tools to punish prosecutorial misconduct, and said Colorado law should be changed so that prosecutors can be held personally liable and sued for such actions.
“It keeps going and it keeps happening because nothing happens to prosecutors who commit misconduct,” she said, adding that judicial sanctions and professional discipline often amount to a slap on the wrist.
Barry Morphew was accused of killing his wife, Suzanne Morphew, who disappeared from the family’s Chaffee County home in May 2020. Her body was never found, but Stanley brought a first-degree murder charge against Barry Morphew in May 2021.
Investigators argued Morphew killed his wife on the night of May 9, 2020, after discovering her two-year extramarital affair, then disposed of her body and belongings before a neighbor reported her missing the next day. Morphew maintained he left his wife asleep in bed on the morning she disappeared and has argued she was abducted or ran away.
Prosecutors dropped all charges against Morphew last year after a judge sanctioned the district attorney’s office for discovery violations, part of what one judge said this month was a larger pattern of such violations by the prosecutor’s office since Stanley took office in 2021. Colorado’s 11th Judicial District includes Chaffee, Custer, Fremont and Park counties.
Eytan wrote in the complaint that Morphew might never have been arrested but for prosecutors’ misconduct, particularly around one piece of evidence — DNA from an unknown male that was found in Suzanne Morphew’s car.
Eytan alleges prosecutors knew about the unidentified DNA in October 2020 — months before Barry Morphew was charged — and knew the DNA was at least a partial match to three unsolved sexual assault crimes in other parts of the country. Despite this, the prosecutors did not tell defense attorneys about the DNA evidence and did not disclose it to the judge who signed Morphew’s arrest warrant, Eytan alleges.
She claims that was a violation of Colorado’s discovery laws, which require district attorneys to turn over any exculpatory evidence to defense attorneys prior to trial.
“This highly exculpatory information was concealed, not included in the affidavit for the arrest warrant, withheld from the judge who signed the arrest warrant, and not mentioned by the prosecution in the preliminary hearings,” Eytan wrote in her complaint.
Eytan learned about the unknown DNA “just prior” to the August 2021 preliminary hearing in the case when she found the information “buried in many terabytes of recently released discovery,” she wrote. The information then became public when the defense called Colorado Bureau of Investigation agent Joseph Cahill to the stand and questioned him about it during the preliminary hearing.
In her complaint, Eytan outlined numerous other alleged ethical violations, including that prosecutors allegedly allowed dishonest and misleading testimony during Barry Morphew’s preliminary hearing, and that they violated his daughters’ rights as victims in the case by surprising them with the motion to dismiss the case.
The motion to dismiss was filed minutes before a scheduled hearing in April 2022 and the DA’s office did not warn the daughters in advance, Eytan wrote. The state’s Victim Rights Act says prosecutors should consult with victims “where practicable” about the reduction or dismissal of charges.
Barry Morphew’s daughters believed he was innocent and did not support his prosecution. Eytan alleges the district attorney’s office did not properly treat them as victims in the case, instead catering to out-of-town relatives who believed Barry Morphew was guilty.
Investigations by the Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel routinely take months to complete.
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