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DENVER (CN) — A 10th Circuit panel on Monday affirmed a lower court’s dismissal of malicious prosecution claims a man filed against the first county to charge him with his wife’s murder.
“We discern no error in the district court’s conclusion that Mr. Morphew’s allegations do not plausibly state a lack of probable cause,” wrote U.S. Circuit Judge Veronica Rossman in a 41-page opinion.
Suzanne Morphew was reported missing from her home in Maysville, Colorado, on Mother’s Day in 2020. Over the course of a yearlong investigation, her husband Barry Morphew met with law enforcement 60 times before being charged with her murder in May 2021.
Investigators argued that Morphew murdered his wife with a hunting tranquilizer gun on May 9, 2020, then spent the next day staging an alibi before reporting her missing. The charges against Morphew were dismissed in April 2022 just before a scheduled trial.
On May 2, 2023, Morphew sued Chaffee County officials who investigated the case and contributed to what he called a faulty arrest affidavit. Morphew asked the court to award $15 million in damages and order law enforcement to release his property — including family photos and expensive hunting scopes.
U.S. District Judge Daniel Domenico, appointed by Donald Trump, dismissed the case on Sept. 24, 2024. Morphew appealed.
While the 10th Circuit reviewed Morphew’s civil case, prosecutors in Colorado’s 12th Judicial District Attorney’s Office filed new murder charges against him in June 2025 based on the discovery of Suzanne’s body in Saguache County in September 2023. Morphew has pleaded not guilty and is expected to stand trial in October.
From a lack of insect and animal activity around the body, investigators concluded the remains had been moved there at some point.
Through toxicology analysis, the El Paso County coroner found evidence of a chemical mixture used to sedate animals like deer. Because the mixture had been metabolized, the coroner concluded Morphew died after being sedated and listed her manner of death as “homicide by unspecific means in the setting of butorphanol, azaperone and medetomidine intoxication."
However, the 10th Circuit considered neither the second round of murder charges nor the discovery of Suzanne Morphew’s remains, instead limiting their review to the lower court’s analysis of Morphew’s first arrest in Chaffee County in 2021. Though Domenico noted deficiencies in the initial pursuit of Morphew, the 10th Circuit agreed with his finding that Chaffee County’s missteps weren’t illegal.
“Notably, the dismissal order is replete with observations about alleged misconduct by the defendants and the mishandling of the state criminal investigation,” said Rossman, a Joe Biden appointee. “Still, as the district court correctly observed, the legal standard for an arrest does not require the same level of certainty as that for a conviction.”
U.S. Circuit Judges Scott Matheson and Gregory Phillips, both Barack Obama appointees, joined the panel’s opinion.
Morphew was represented on appeal by attorney David Fisher of Fisher & Byrialsen in Denver. In state court, his defense is led by attorney David Beller at Recht Kornfeld in Denver. Neither attorney immediately responded to a request for comment.
Attorney J. Andrew Nathan of Nathan Dumm in Denver represented Chaffee County on appeal and did not respond to an inquiry for comment.
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