DENVER—The first person in Colorado released from prison because of DNA evidence is suing police and prosecutors who worked to put him behind bars.
Lawyers for Tim Masters filed the suit in federal court on Tuesday, claiming that hundreds of documents and expert opinions that pointed toward his innocence in the slaying of Peggy Hettrick were withheld from his lawyers.
Masters was freed from prison in January after serving 10 years in prison because advanced DNA evidence failed to connect him to Hettrick’s death.
Prosecutors alleged that Masters killed Hettrick in 1987 when he was 15. He was prosecuted and convicted 12 years later.
Fort Collins police and Larimer County prosecutors declined to comment, saying they don’t discuss pending litigation.
The suit says the withheld evidence included the existence of another suspect, eye doctor Richard Hammond. He lived near the spot where Hettrick’s body was found and was later charged with secretly videotaping women who used his bathroom. The suit also says that an FBI profiler disagreed with the opinion of the prosecution’s star witness, criminal psychologist Reid Meloy, on Masters’ violent teenage drawings.
According to the suit, Meloy now says that prosecutors “intentionally manipulated” his opinion by only giving him a portion of the evidence available and misrepresenting the physical evidence.
In September, Colorado’s Supreme Court censured two former prosecutors in the case for failing to turn over information to Masters’ attorneys. Terrance A. Gilmore and Jolene C. Blair are now both judges in Colorado’s 8th Judicial District. In an agreement with the Supreme Court’s Office of Attorney Regulation, both acknowledged failing to ensure defense attorneys received several key pieces of information obtained by police that called into question Masters’ guilt.
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Information from: The Denver Post,
