The work of a district attorney whose discovery violations in part led to charges being dismissed in two high-profile murder trials, including the doomed Barry Morphew case, was also under a cloud of uncertainty in a 2023 triple murder case.

The Colorado Supreme Court disbarred Linda Stanley in November for ethical violations and misconduct, much of that shadowed by her handling of the investigation into the 2020 death of Suzanne Morphew.

Stanley testified that finding and retaining staff in rural jurisdictions with few resources was a challenge.

Her former Deputy District Attorney Jeff Lindsey, who was elected in November, has taken over the flailing prosecution of Hanme Clark, after a year-and-a-half of motions that could have spelled the end of the prosecution’s case.

He said that when he took over for Stanley “it was a low bar” and added “I’m showing up every day and everyone in this office is doing the people’s work.”

Clark is a former MMA fighter who allegedly shot three people to death and wounded another in a property dispute in an area northeast of Westcliffe.

In court last week, Lindsey acknowledged that the case could be salvaged.

“This is the type of case that requires significant oversight and that didn’t happen,” he said in court . “If this case had proceeded it could have been another Morphew.”

Witnesses say Clark, 45, ambushed the group as they were preparing to install a fence along an easement which divided his and a neighbor’s land. The killings happened Nov. 20, 2023, but the case has languished as it moved through the courts not only due to discovery violations, but also because the DNA and ballistics evidence analysis that were being done by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation took longer than usual.

Eleventh Judicial District Judge Lauren Swan sanctioned the DA’s office last week and reopened the preliminary hearing, which will allow for witnesses and other evidence that was not provided early in the case to be examined.

The evidence will be presented May 21 with a two-week trial scheduled for mid-June.

A deadly dispute 

The shootings occurred in broad daylight in a wooded area northeast of Westcliffe.

Beth Wade Geers, 73, and her husband Robert Geers, 63, of Colorado Springs, and James Patrick Daulton, 58, of Westcliffe were killed. Daulton’s wife, Patty Jean, 56, was rushed to the hospital in critical condition but survived. She is expected to be a critical witness in the trial as is the surveyor, who fled the scene unharmed.

Clark was charged with three counts of murder and one count of attempted murder and his wife, 50-year-old Nancy Rae Medina-Kochis, was charged with accessory after the fact.

The couple allegedly fled and were arrested in New Mexico a day after the shooting.

Complicating the case is the fact that the defense would like to cross-examine a Custer County Sheriff’s deputy who knew a lot about the property dispute in Westcliffe because he had handled the complaints there before the shooting happened.

However, Jason Salbato was fired, perhaps erroneously, after Stanley ordered her own investigator with the 11th Judicial District to look into a separate allegation that Salbato failed to report an incident of child abuse.

He was arrested in March 2024, but the courts dismissed all charges against him. By that time the Custer County Sheriff’s Office had turned over personnel and his job was lost.

“It’s like getting blood from a turnip”

Though it appears that Lindsey has righted the four-county judicial district after Stanley’s mistake-riddled reign, trouble still follows her.

Last week, Judge Swan ordered Stanley to pay Fremont, Chaffee, and Custer counties more than $307,000 after each county’s Board of County Commissioners sued her for using taxpayers’ money to pay for her defense in the Colorado Supreme Court ethics investigation. The amount is three times the money she spent, inflated for damages.

The fourth county in the 11th, Park County, is the only entity that did not join in the lawsuit.

So far, Stanley has not complied with the order and Fremont County Commissioner Kevin Grantham is not hopeful she will pay up.

“It’s like getting blood from a turnip,” he said.

When the saga first started, it took nine days to serve the lawsuit because Stanley was living in a remote cabin in Guffey, according to an affidavit obtained by The Denver Gazette. When processors located her in December, she denied who she was and threw the paperwork into the dirt.

A second attempt to contact Stanley through a registered letter was marked “rejected” and returned.

“It’s a debacle which defies logic,” Grantham said.

Stanley did not respond to a request for comment by The Denver Gazette.