A Colorado judge on Tuesday dismissed the $15 million lawsuit that Barry Morphew brought against the law enforcement officers and prosecutors who charged him with murdering his wife three years ago.
Morphew, 56, claimed in the federal lawsuit that authorities wrongly arrested him in the death of his wife, Suzanne Morphew, a year after she disappeared from the family’s Chaffee County home in 2020. He claimed authorities fabricated evidence, ignored exculpatory evidence and conducted a malicious prosecution.
The charges were dropped in 2022, and Barry Morphew has maintained his innocence in Suzanne’s death. He sued for $15 million in damages over the dropped prosecution in 2023.
But U.S. District Judge Daniel Domenico dismissed that lawsuit Tuesday, finding that authorities met the legal standard to arrest Morphew based on the evidence in the case. In a 33-page dismissal order, Domenico listed just over two pages of facts that supported the prosecution’s theory that Morphew discovered his wife’s extramarital affair and killed her at the family’s home on the afternoon of May 9, 2020.
The judge also listed just under a page of facts that supported the defense theory that Suzanne Morphew was abducted by a stranger on May 10, 2020. Morphew has said he left his wife asleep in bed that morning.
“Even including the facts that (Morphew) alleges were misleadingly omitted from the affidavit and setting aside those he says were wrongfully included or fabricated, no reasonable person could have looked at the allegations in it and found that probable cause was lacking,” Domenico wrote.
Morphew’s attorney, Iris Eytan, said in a statement Wednesday that Morphew’s “legal battle is far from over.”
“We maintain there was no fair probability that Barry was involved in Suzanne’s murder,” she said.
In the order, Domenico noted that the evidence in the case showed Suzanne Morphew considered her husband to be both “physically and emotionally abusive,” and that he was the last person to see her alive. Domenico also noted that Morphew changed his plans on the day of his wife’s disappearance, deposited items in several dumpsters miles from his home that morning, had a “fuzzy” memory of the events leading up to his wife’s disappearance and had scratches on his arm.
Evidence showed Barry Morphew had access to the animal tranquilizers found in Suzanne Morphew’s body and that he was a “a skilled hunter and a landscaper and may have had the tools and expertise to kill his wife, bury her body, and destroy the evidence,” Domenico wrote.
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That evidence met the legal standard for Morphew’s arrest and prosecution, Domenico wrote, even considering that unknown male DNA linked to unsolved sex assaults was found in Suzanne Morphew’s car and home, and that a cadaver dog did not alert to the presence of a body in the family’s vehicles.
Domenico acknowledged that “everyone involved now agrees” that Barry Morphew should not have been arrested in 2021, because there were still “loose ends” to tie up in the investigation. He called the decision to charge Morphew at that time “unwise.”
“But as noted above, not every unwise decision is unconstitutional, and the legal (if not ethical) standard for an arrest does not require the same level of certainty as that for a conviction,” he wrote.
A state disciplinary panel earlier this month found that 11th Judicial District Attorney Linda Stanley, who brought the charges against Morphew, should be disbarred largely because of her mishandling of the prosecution.
The investigation into Suzanne Morphew’s death is ongoing, and no one is currently facing charges in her killing.
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