According to 9News reporters Wilson Beese and Kevin Vaughan, a judge in Alamosa County increased Barry Morphew’s bail to $10 million and maintained the previous “cash only” stipulation today.
Morphew, who is facing trial in the 2020 murder of his wife Suzanne Morphew, already had his bail effectively revoked when a judge changed his then $3 million bond to “cash only” last Friday after a recent hit-and-run crash in Denver where he fled the scene.
District Judge Amanda C. Hopkins, who is overseeing the case, then ordered that Morphew be confined to his home “at all times, no exceptions.” A day later, the judge issued an arrest warrant and added the “cash only” requirement to his existing bond.
The last time Morphew posted bail in 2025 he used a bondsman to post 10% of the $3 million bond, indicating he did not have the full amount. During today’s court appearance, the judge revealed that Morphew had “bragged” on a phone call recorded from prison that he would be out on the $3 million cash-only bond by this upcoming weekend. This took place before the judge agreed with the prosecution’s request to raise the bond amount.
“With an indictment for first-degree murder sitting on all of our desks, he’s walking around doing whatever he wants in violation of the court’s bond conditions, and that has to be acknowledged not as just a singular bond violation, but as a pattern of conduct with no respect for the conditions the court has set to ensure he’s here for trial,” a prosecutor said.
The judge agreed, with the added information that the GPS monitoring company did nothing when Morphew violated the conditions of his bond. “If the company received an alert, they would not call police, or notify the court or the prosecution. It would simply call Mr. Morphew and tell him to get back into the zone,” she said.
Morphew’s defense team argued unsuccessfully that he was not a flight risk.
If Morphew is able to come up with the full bond amount, it could risk the judge’s earlier determination that he didn’t have the financial means to afford his attorneys. That decision provided him with court-appointed lawyers paid for by the state.
If the court-appointed lawyers are taken away, it would mean a delay in possible years for a case that’s already more than six years old according to 9News legal expert, Scott Robinson.
