CHAFFEE COUNTY, Colo. — A Southern Colorado District Attorney was accused of breaking so many rules that every judge in her district was forced to recuse themselves from hearing one of her cases, because they thought they would have to file a complaint against her.
There's a reason why prosecutors aren’t supposed to speak publicly about cases before they go to trial, like the way in which 11th Judicial District Attorney Linda Stanley talked about a man charged with the murder of a 10-month-old boy he was taking care of.
"I’m going to be very blunt here," Stanley told 9NEWS's partners at KRDO in an August interview. "He has zero investment in this child. Zero. He’s watching that baby so that he can get laid. That’s it."
Stanley is the top prosecutor in Chafee, Fremont, Park and Custer counties. Before the man charged with murder was supposed to go to trial in her district, her interview raised questions. William Jacobs was charged with murder for the death of the little boy he was left to care for. Brooke Crawford was also charged with child abuse resulting in death.
"Without the caring factor, without the love factor, that baby is a pain in the a**," Stanley said in the interview.
Court documents obtained by 9NEWS show the judge presiding over the murder case found the comments so unethical they considered filing a complaint against Stanley with the state.
The only issue is, if they did that, they would have to recuse themselves from all cases the DA is a part of. In a district as small as this, that would be impossible. So instead, the Chief Judge recused every single judge in the district and the case was asked to be transferred to a different part of the state.
"The Court was concerned that if, after hearing, the allegations in the Motion proved to be true, the presiding judge might feel compelled to file an ethics complaint against the elected District Attorney, Linda Stanley," District Court Judge Patrick Murphy wrote in a Nov. 13 order. "This could possibly lead to recusal of that judge from all cases prosecuted by Mrs. Stanley. Removing a local judge from all criminal cases in a small district for an indefinite period of time would create a vacuum that would be impossible to fill."
The district had gone through this before, when a now-former judge filed a complaint after Stanley launched a secret investigation into the judge and his family.
The former judge told 9NEWS the investigation was to get retribution for his rulings. After he recused himself, the district court says it struggled to fill the schedule with judges for the criminal cases that needed to be heard.
"I really have never heard of a situation where an entire judicial district had to recuse itself because of actions taken by an elected DA," said 9NEWS Legal Analyst Scott Robinson. "You just can’t be making those types of remarks to the press, to the media."
Stanley is currently under investigation by the Colorado Supreme Court after a complaint was filed by the Attorney Regulation Counsel. In it, they call her statements in the interview “brazen” and argue she violated the defendants’ rights of being presumed innocent until he was proven guilty.
"To be in a position where we have judges having to file complaints against DAs for improper and unethical conduct, that’s going to be a problem for literally months and months," Robinson said.
Stanley had no problem talking about other cases back then. Since the investigation into her own conduct was launched, she’s never responded to any of our interview requests.
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