FORT COLLINS, Colo.—A former prosecutor in a botched murder case told attorney regulators she was “embarrassed” and called the case leading to the state’s first DNA exoneration “frustrating.”
Terence Gilmore and Jolene Blair, now judges in the 8th Judicial District, won the conviction of Tim Masters in 1999, 12 years after the Feb. 11, 1987, slaying of Peggy Hettrick.
Masters served nearly 10 years in prison before he was cleared by advanced DNA testing. He was released from prison in January 2008.
Gilmore and Blair in September were disciplined by the Office of Attorney Regulation, an arm of the Colorado Supreme Court, for failing to ensure defense attorneys had all the evidence gathered by police. The two were publicly censured but can still practice law.
The Coloradoan obtained documents and tape recordings of interviews with attorney regulators under Colorado’s open records law for a story published Sunday. Both former prosecutors, in separate interviews in May, told regulators they didn’t make any of the evidence secret.
Each has declined public comment because Hettrick’s slaying remains unsolved and both face a federal lawsuit.
“It’s very frustrating to look back on a case you tried 10 years ago and discover that there’s all of this information that you never had,” Blair said. “Would I have done it differently? Absolutely. I wish I knew now what I didn’t know then.”
Among the pieces of evidence cited by attorney regulators as not being turned over are hundreds of pages of notes used by a forensic psychologist to form opinions about violent drawings found in Masters’ bedroom. Police and prosecutors used this report to buttress their circumstantial case against Masters.
Masters’ attorneys have said they could have used that information to cross-examine the expert.
“All I can tell you is that my energies were focused elsewhere and I am embarrassed that we missed it,” Blair said about their failure to turn them over. “But I can tell you that, you know, we didn’t make them a secret, and if the defense had just said ‘Could we have those 238 pages of extractions,’ they would have been provided just as soon as possible.
“That doesn’t negate our responsibility to provide them, but we just missed it,” she told regulators.
Masters’ trial attorneys, Nathan Chambers and Eric Fischer, have said other evidence collected by police, which included hair fibers, fingerprints from Hettrick’s purse and footprints from the scene, would have been enough to acquit Masters.
Gilmore said there were several instances where Chambers and Fischer failed to aggressively question witnesses. “(N)o real follow up … no cross examination … there was nothing,” he said.
The Colorado Attorney General’s office is leading the investigation into Hettrick’s slaying.
Two separate investigations have cleared lead detective Jim Broderick of wrongdoing. He is also a defendant in the federal lawsuit that names Gilmore and Blair, the city, and the former district attorney.
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Information from: Fort Collins Coloradoan,
