DENVER—A state House Judiciary Committee meeting on Wednesday reunited Tom Turner with Timothy Masters, the man Turner and 11 other jurors convicted of first-degree murder and sent to prison for life.
Outside the hearing room, Turner caught up with Masters and apologized for the conviction, which was overturned Jan. 22. Masters became the first person in Colorado released because of DNA evidence.
“I told him, ‘I’m sorry.'” Turner said.
The first meeting between Masters and Turner ended when Masters told him simply: “We’ll talk later.”
Both were at the Capitol to testify before lawmakers considering requiring law enforcement agencies to preserve DNA evidence.
Outside another hearing, Masters said he had forgiven the jurors, prosecutors and police who played a role in his 9 1/2 years of incarceration for the 1987 slaying of Peggy Hettrick in Fort Collins.
“They were manipulated,” Masters said of the jurors. “I’m not wasting my time harboring any angry feelings against anybody who did this to me. I need to be moving on.”
Legislators recently discovered that Colorado law does not require authorities to preserve DNA evidence, which has played a key role in exonerating 214 wrongly convicted people across the country, according to the New York-based Innocence Project.
Fourteen states require that DNA evidence be stored for the duration of the defendant’s sentence, according to Rebecca Brown, a policy analyst for the Innocence Project.
Defense attorneys, civil liberties groups and Masters asked lawmakers to consider evolving technology to test DNA that could be used to exonerate those wrongly convicted. It could also be used to help police solve cold cases.
House Bill 1351 would also clarify the process for training law enforcement agencies across the state, what evidence would be preserved and for how long.
While most people who testified took up their allotted three minutes, Masters’ testimony last just over a minute.
“I can’t emphasize how important DNA evidence preservation is …. I lucked out because it was around. If they hadn’t kept it around, if they had destroyed it, I would still be locked up in there.”
Turner was on the jury in March 1999 when Larimer County prosecutors presented a circumstantial case against Masters. It was built largely on a forensic psychologist’s analysis of the crime scene, Masters’ violent teenage drawings and grief over the loss of his mother.
Turner told the committee he was shocked at how Masters’ case was presented.
“I assumed that everybody was doing their job,” Turner said of Masters’ trial. “But when I look back now, it’s more about winning. It’s not about the truth.”
A task force appointed by Gov. Bill Ritter, former Denver district attorney, crafted the bill that calls for the destruction of bulk evidence such as panties, shirts, couches and sample evidence—parts of evidence that were tested for DNA—for less serious crimes.
H. Jeffrey Bayless, a retired Denver judge who chaired the task force, said that in the most serious felony cases all DNA evidence would be stored for the life of the defendant.
Others who testified, including Aurora police chief Daniel Oates, said law enforcement officials were concerned with the costs of storing the evidence.
Terrance Carroll, D-Denver, chair of the committee, said they planned to revisit the bill after next week’s budget discussions.
