Judges Censured Over Master's Case
It certainly doesn't give Tim back those years. He should still be compensated.
The Colorado Supreme Court on Tuesday censured two Fort Collins judges for missteps in the now-overturned 1999 murder conviction of Tim Masters.
Judges Terry Gilmore and Jolene Blair, who were both prosecutors at the time, were publicly admonished for failing to turn over important evidence to the attorneys who defended Masters in the slaying of Peggy Hettrick.
Masters spent nearly a decade in prison for the murder before he was freed early this year in the face of new DNA evidence.
Hettrick, 37, was stabbed and dumped in a south Fort Collins field on Feb. 11, 1987. Her killer sexually mutilated her, slicing away flesh from her breast and vagina.
Within hours, police investigators focused on Masters, a 15-year- old high school student who lived in a mobile home next to the field. But it wasn't until 1998 that police arrested him — relying largely on a forensic psychologist's interpretations of his drawings and writings.
Gilmore and Blair took the case to a jury in 1999, and Masters was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
Rocky Mountain News
2 comments:
This is just more evidence that the judicial system in Colorado is corrupt at each level. Each level steps on the victims and the accused to be advanced in their careers. Cops get notches on their belts for arrests and promoted. District Attorneys get to be governors. Legislators get a reputation for being tough on crime. DOC builds more prisons. Parole keeps the public "safe" by keeping prisoners off the streets for the rest of their lives. Guards feel they have all the power in the world by punishing prisoners for snapping dish towels...and it goes on and on.
Drug addicts die. Prisoners and victim's families lives are ruined.
mpc
I totally agree with MPC however, if those two prosecutors are not severally punished for there rotten deeds, The entire criminal justice system reeks with cronyism, corruption, (CDOC is the worst). Here they are trying to build more prisons and they are hiding millions of dollars of lawsuits for there guards raping the women inmates. They need to come clean with the public and clean up the prison system of corruption.
I suspect if they dont one day soon the militia will have to do it for them. Maybe its begun, there was a DA shot in his driveway. djw
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