FORT COLLINS, Colo.—Lawyers who successfully tried a 15-year-old boy for murder in 1999 improperly withheld documents from his defense team, according to a motion filed Wednesday by a special prosecutor.
Tim Masters was convicted of first-degree murder in the death of Peggy Hettrick and is serving a life sentence. Masters is seeking a new trial arguing that his conviction was unfair.
In the filing, Adams County District Attorney Don Quick, who is acting as a special prosecutor in the case for the state, said Masters’ 1999 defense team was not given four sets of records.
The evidence includes police consultations with a plastic surgeon and an FBI agent who disagreed with authorities’ theories about the 1987 stabbing death in Fort Collins.
Additionally, a 274-page analysis of the case by a third expert, and information about an elaborate surveillance operation conducted in 1988 was not provided, as required.
According to Quick’s filing, Fort Collins police investigators failed to turn over documents to the original prosecutors, Terry Gilmore and Jolene Blair. However, prosecutors have a duty to seek out all relevant documents and share them with the defense in what is known as discovery.
It is likely Gilmore and Blair—both of whom are now judges—will have to defend their actions in hearings later this month. They have declined to comment on the case.
If the violations are ruled significant, Masters could be given a new trial.
The motion came less than two weeks after Assistant District Attorney Michael Goodbee said his office would acknowledge discovery violations in the original case.
Hettrick, 37, was stabbed in the back, sexually mutilated and left in a vacant field in south Fort Collins.
Masters, a 15-year-old high school student at the time, was the focus of the investigation from its first hours, but it wasn’t until 1998 that Fort Collins police detectives obtained an arrest warrant.
