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Ethics

District attorney ‘paid little attention to the five-alarm fire’ in high-profile case and should be disbarred, panel says

By Debra Cassens Weiss

September 16, 2024, 11:07 am CDT

A Colorado district attorney should be disbarred mostly for her “absence at the helm” in a high-profile murder case in which prosecutors failed to turn over sufficient expert witness information to the defense, leading to the exclusion of experts, according to a Colorado disciplinary hearing board.

In a Sept. 10 decision, the board recommended disbarment for District Attorney Linda Stanley of the 11th Judicial District in Colorado. She has the option of appealing the order.

The Denver Post (via the Legal Profession Blog), the Associated Press and Law360 have coverage of the decision.

The disciplinary board said Stanley failed to adequately oversee the murder prosecution of Barry Morphew. She also initiated a baseless domestic-abuse investigation of the presiding judge who barred many of the prosecution’s expert witnesses.

Morphew’s wife disappeared on a bike ride in May 2020. The prosecution dropped the charges in April 2022, nine days before the scheduled start of the trial. Morphew has said he is innocent.

Stanley sought the probe of the judge after hearing that his ex-wife was an advocate of for domestic-abuse victims. The ex-wife told Stanley’s investigator that she had never been abused.

Stanley also made improper remarks to the media in the Morphew case and a fatal child-abuse case, the board found. Stanley had said she thought that her remarks in the second case were off the record.

Stanley’s “absence at the helm” in the Morphew case ended with it “running aground,” the board said in an opinion by Presiding Disciplinary Judge Bryon M. Large.

Discovery issues included a massive amount of information that the sheriff’s office delivered on a hard drive to prosecutors without a useful organization. A hard drive of the information was hand delivered to the defense. But bandwidth issues made integrating the material into an e-discovery platform difficult.

In addition, the lead prosecutor on the case said he felt taxed and overwhelmed. He resigned in October 2021. A replacement agreed to work only part time and had trouble accessing discovery information online.

Stanley “was aware, from the time the sheriff’s office delivered to her office a ten-terabyte hard drive of information, that the sheer volume of disorganized, unlabeled discovery promised to pose a problem for the prosecution,” the hearing board said. “The prosecution never truly had a command of the universe of discovery.”

After the lead prosecutor resigned, Stanley failed to designate a new lead counsel, creating confusion.

“Lawyers pointed us to no one—or worse still, to one another—when asked to identify lead counsel,” the hearing board said.

Stanley also failed her team when it became apparent that it was struggling to compile expert-witness information before a deadline and when she learned that the defense was seeking to exclude expert testimony because of failings, according to the hearing board.

Although Stanley “was aware of these very serious developments, she paid little attention to the five-alarm fire and instead relied on [two other lawyers] to extinguish the blaze,” the hearing board majority said.

Stanley’s “failure to ensure her team interviewed experts, reviewed expert reports and statements, and disclosed all facts and data underlying those statements represents an abdication of her supervisory duties,” the majority concluded.

Stanley’s “failure to rise to the moment when so much was at stake” cannot be overlooked, the majority said.

A dissenting panel member, Sherry A. Caloia, would have imposed a suspension of two and a half years rather than disbarment. She expressed concern that the Morphew case “has undergone an extensive amount of Monday-morning quarterbacking.”

Stanley “put very capable and experienced lawyers in charge of the Morphew case,” and she relied on their expertise, Caloia said.

Stanley is a 2010 graduate of the University of Denver Sturm College of Law who previously worked as a police officer and a truck driver. When she took office, she said it was buried in a backlog of cases and hampered by prosecutorial vacancies.

Steve Jensen, Stanley’s lawyer, told the Denver Post that he and his client disagree with the decision.

“This was a hard-fought trial but we do not think that Ms. Stanley’s conduct deserves disbarment, period,” he said. “And I believe Ms. Stanley is a good person and also an ethical attorney.”

Jensen told the Associated Press that she was a district attorney in a rural area and didn’t have much experience in high-profile cases, she had fewer resources than prosecutors in urban areas, and she had a difficult time finding prosecutors to work on the case.

Jensen told the Associated Press that he and Stanley were considering whether to appeal.

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3. 2 federal judges who boycotted Columbia law…

Judiciary

2 federal judges who boycotted Columbia law grads didn’t commit misconduct, review panel says

By Debra Cassens Weiss

September 17, 2024, 10:10 am CDT

Two federal judges who said they wouldn’t hire future law grads from Columbia University did not commit misconduct, according to a review panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at Atlanta’s judicial council.

The review panel appeared to be referring to U.S. Circuit Judge Elizabeth Branch and U.S. District Judge Tilman E. Self III of the Middle District of Georgia, the only judges who signed a letter announcing the boycott within the 11th Circuit.

Law360, Reuters and Bloomberg Law covered the Aug. 12 order released last week.

Branch and Self were among 13 federal judges who signed the letter pledging not to hire future Columbia grads for clerkships because of the school’s handling of campus disruptions. All 13 judges were appointees of former President Donald Trump.

The judges’ May 2024 letter deemed Columbia to be “an incubator of bigotry” and said the university should embrace viewpoint diversity and impose serious consequences for students and faculty who participate in campus disruptions and violate university rules.

The no-misconduct finding follows an August 2024 decision drawing the same conclusion by a review panel of the 5th Circuit at New Orleans’ judicial council. The 5th Circuit review panel found no ethics violations by eight federal judges within the 5th Circuit, including, apparently, Circuit Judge James C. Ho.

The 11th Circuit review panel affirmed a decision by the 11th Circuit Chief Judge William H. Pryor Jr. The order included Pryor’s June 2024 decision dismissing the complaint.

There is no basis for a finding of misconduct, Pryor had said.

“Federal judges routinely hire law clerks and must consider applicants’ educational backgrounds in determining whether an applicant is qualified for and will succeed in the job. As part of that consideration, judges are permitted to make reasonable conclusions regarding the value and quality of a school’s educational program,” he wrote.

A person who filed a complaint against the judges with the 11th Circuit said there is every reason to think that judges who are willing to punish a university and its graduates “will skew their judicial rulings in a similar manner.”

“It is no stretch of the imagination,” the complainant wrote, to conceive that the judges will “attempt to discern the political views of the parties and counsel before them and discriminate and retaliate against them.”

The complainant also called for an investigation into whether “outside organizations or foreign governments” orchestrated the judges’ letter.

Pryor responded that that the complainant’s claims lack sufficient evidence, including insufficient evidence to show that the judges “treated or will treat individuals in a demonstrably egregious and hostile manner.”