The five-year saga of the rise and fall of Linda Stanley entered its closing chapter over the last week as the Colorado Supreme Court ruled 4-2 to uphold the disbarment of Linda Stanley. That came three days after District Court Judge Laura Swan denied Stanley’s “Motion to Set Aside the Default Judgment.”
The motion made by Stanley in August was a last-ditch attempt by Stanley to avoid the $307,264.23 defualt judgment entered against her by the four counties that make up the 11th Judicial District (The Counties are Custer, Fremont, Chaffee, and Park). Since Stanley was disbarred in November of 2024, she had avoided the lawsuit against her by the four counties and never entered her appearance in the case. At the same time, Stanley had appealed her disbarment by the Office of Attorney Regulation (which works under the Supreme Court of Colorado) directly to the Supreme Court Justices.
Stanley’s goal was to have her disbarment overturned, which would mean that she did not owe the four counties the default judgment entered against her for illegally using public money to fund her defense against being disbarred.
In August, Judge Swan issued an order, and Stanley was finally forced to reply to the courts or risk having a bench warrant issued for her arrest. Instead of answering the questions posed by the court after the default judgment against her, she filed a motion essentially to try to restart the case that the four counties had already filed and won by default.
In her motion, Stanley told repeated falsehoods that she had never been served the documents of the lawsuit. Furthermore, she claimed she had no idea that she was being sued. However, Judge Swan, in her ruling on August 29, pointed out that hearings had been held to ensure Stanley had been served. At one point, Stanley had taken the documents served to her at her Guffy home and thrown them in the mud.
On Monday, September 8, the Colorado Supreme Court slammed shut Stanley’s last hope of avoiding punishment for her four years of inept leadership as the District Attorney of the 11th Judicial District. Justice William W. Hood III summed up Stanley’s legacy as the District Attorney, “Stanley abused her position as elected DA, seriously impeding the rights of defendants, the right to justice for alleged victims, and the right of Coloradans to adjudicate the guilt or innocence of alleged perpetrators of serious crime.”
Two justices dissented from the majority opinion, but only on technicalities of the presiding disciplinary judge, Bryon Large, who had prosecuted Stanley the first time she was censured by the Supreme Court in 2019. “We live in a cynical world in which parts of the public are skeptical of judges, which means that the perception of impartiality and fairness is more important than ever — certainly, as important as impartiality and fairness themselves,” Justice Samour wrote. But before Stanley’s “livelihood as an attorney in this state is permanently taken away, she’s entitled to a proceeding conducted in front of a tribunal whose impartiality and fairness cannot reasonably be doubted or even questioned.” Justice Samour was clear that he did not think that Large had been biased and acknowledged that there were no rules that prevented him from overseeing the hearing. Instead, Samour would have liked to have a second hearing.
Any chances that Stanley had at becoming an attorney again or avoiding the $307,264.23 she owes the four counties ended with the Supreme Court Ruling on September 8.
Jordan Hedberg