FORT COLLINS — Police Lt. Jim Broderick, charged with perjury related to his role in the Tim Masters murder case, today told a judge that he is not guilty of the seven charges that remain against him.
During a status hearing this afternoon in court, Broderick was asked if he wished to enter a plea.
“Absolutely innocent,” he said.
Masters was convicted in 1999 for the 1987 murder of Peggy Hettrick in Fort Collins. Masters, who was 15 at the time of the murder, had served nearly 10 years of his life sentence when, in 2008, a visiting judge freed him, ruling that DNA evidence pointed to another suspect in Hettrick’s murder.
In June, Broderick was indicted by a Larimer County grand jury on eight counts of felony perjury for his role in building a case against Masters.
One of the eight charges, related to the criminal profile used to arrest Masters, was tossed last week because the judge determined that Broderick had never sworn to the truth of the document, which he wrote based on the investigatory work of another detective.
The city of Fort Collins, Larimer County and their insurers paid Masters $10 million to settle his federal wrongful-imprisonment lawsuit, but they admitted no wrongdoing.
Terry Gilmore and Jolene Blair – the two lead prosecutors in the case who later became district judges – were voted off the bench in November, thanks to an anti-retention campaign launched against them by supporters of Masters.
Monte Whaley: 720-929-0907 or mwhaley@denverpost.com
