Editor’s Note: Law Week Colorado edits court opinion summaries for style and, when necessary, length.
Following the highly publicized disappearance of a Chaffee County wife and mother, the newly elected district attorney of Colorado’s 11th Judicial District, Linda Stanley, brought first-degree murder charges against the woman’s husband.
During the prosecution, Stanley made three improper extrajudicial statements about the case to the media, which threatened to prejudice the defendant and undermine the public’s interest in justice. Those statements contributed in part to a judicial ruling changing the venue in the case.
At the same time, Stanley didn’t adequately supervise the prosecution of the case, according to the opinion. She failed to direct adequate administrative resources in a timely manner to process discovery, leading to a series of judicially imposed sanctions against the prosecution for discovery violations.
She failed to take reasonable measures to establish a leadership structure that ensured accountability within the prosecution team, with the result that important projects in the case fell through the cracks. She also failed to intervene when the prosecution team was given an opportunity to cure its deficient endorsements for expert witnesses, the majority of whom were eventually excluded.
After the presiding judge issued several adverse rulings less than two months before jury selection, Stanley instructed her chief investigator to interview the judge’s former spouse to determine whether the judge committed domestic abuse. Even though she had no credible evidence to believe that the judge had ever engaged in such criminal conduct, Stanley ordered the investigation in an effort to uncover information about the judge that would require him to recuse himself from the case, according to the opinion.
Shortly after the interview, which revealed that the judge had never abused his former spouse, Stanley dismissed the case without prejudice.
In a bid to rehabilitate her relationship with the media, Stanley later agreed to sit for a videotaped interview with a local reporter. During that interview, which she reasonably should have known was on the record and would be publicly disseminated, she again made improper extrajudicial statements about two defendants criminally charged in the death of a 10-month-old baby.
She effectively pronounced that one of the defendants was guilty, revealed inadmissible details about the defendant’s sexually based juvenile offenses and impugned the motives and character of the defendants.
Two judicial officers, ruling independently, concluded that Stanley’s extrajudicial statements amounted to outrageous government conduct so severely prejudicing the defendants that the judiciary was required to dismiss each defendant’s criminal case.
Taken in totality, a majority of the hearing board concluded that these ethical violations warranted Stanley’s disbarment.