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Judge Refuses To Dismiss Murder Case Against Barry Morphew
While District Court Judge Ramsey Lama agreed that the prosecution hasn't been as forthcoming with discovery as they perhaps should be, he denied Barry Morphew's request to dismiss charges against him.
The impending murder trial of Barry Morphew is moving ahead after a judge rejected the Colorado man’s request for the case to be dismissed.
Morphew stands accused of murdering his wife Suzanne Morphew, 49, who vanished on Mother’s Day of 2020 after reportedly going for a bicycle ride. Neither she nor her body have ever been found; he was arrested last year in connection with her presumed murder.
District Court Judge Ramsey Lama has denied the defense's request from last week to dismiss the murder case, Fox 59 in Indianapolis reports. Barry Morphew's attorneys had argued that there was no evidence that Suzanne Morphew — who, with her husband, had moved to Clorado from Alexandria, Indiana — was murdered.
“It has been well established and confessed by the prosecution that there is no body, no confession, no eyewitness testimony or physical evidence that Ms. Morphew is dead, was murdered or that Mr. Morphew is responsible,” the attorneys wrote, KXRM reports.
In the defense's motion to dismiss the first-degree murder and related charges against him, they also included an allegation by a lead investigator in the case who claimed that the arrest of Morphew was premature.
Defense attorneys also argued that they hadn’t received all the prosecution’s discovery materials.
Lama acknowledged that the prosecution didn’t adequately share materials with the defense and that they have shown a “continuing pattern” of failing to turn over discovery materials ahead of the upcoming trial.
The judge also noted that DNA that wasn’t a match to Barry Morphew was found on some of Suzanne Morphew’s recovered belongings, including her bike helmet, bike seat and parts of her car, Fox 59 reports. That DNA was a partial match to unsolved sexual assault investigations in both Illinois and Arizona. This information was not provided to the court in a timely manner, Lama stated.
Still, Morphew’s trial is expected to begin on April 28 and continue for about five weeks.
Barry Morphew had previously suggested, among other scenarios, that Suzanne Morphew could have been attacked by wildlife during her bike ride.
“I will do whatever it takes to get you back. Honey, I love you and I want you back so bad,” Barry Morphew pleaded in a 2020 Facebook video, posted just days after his wife vanished. That video seemed to infer that he believed someone could be holding her captive; he alluded to a possible ransom, saying he’d pay anything to free her.
