Courts - Colorado County to pay $4.1M to wrongly imprisoned man DNA evidence cleared him in murder

By Samantha Abernethy Associated Press Writer FORT COLLINS, Colo. (AP) -- Larimer County has agreed to pay $4.1 million to settle a federal lawsuit filed by a man who was wrongly imprisoned for nearly 10 years in a slaying that remains unsolved. Timothy Masters was convicted in 1999 in the murder and sexual mutilation of Peggy Hettrick in Fort Collins, but a judge overturned the conviction in 2008 after DNA evidence pointed toward another suspect. Former prosecutors Jolene Blair and Terence Gilmore, now judges in Larimer County, objected to the settlement, saying through their attorneys that they did nothing wrong and would have won the case in court. Commissioners said they believe Masters received a fair trial, but the county had already spent $400,000 defending itself and the risk of losing in court wasn't worth it. The vote was unanimous. "I'd rather see a guilty man go free than see an innocent man convicted," Commissioner Tom Donnelly said during the meeting, afterward adding he was sorry for Masters' conviction. "I'm also sorry for the (judges) because they didn't have a chance to defend themselves." Blair and Gilmore were rebuked in 2008 by state attorney regulators. Both acknowledged they failed to ensure defense attorneys received several key pieces of information obtained by police that called the prosecution's case into question. Masters' lawsuit claims detectives and prosecutors maliciously targeted him and destroyed or withheld evidence that could have cleared him. Claims against police and Fort Collins are pending. Masters was the first person freed from prison in Colorado because of DNA evidence. He has been trying to earn a living by bidding on abandoned storage sheds and selling the contents on eBay. "Tim has been basically destitute since they released him from prison without an apology," said his attorney David Lane. "This gives him a good chance to start putting this behind him." Lane said Masters has had his arrest and court record sealed, meaning his arrest and conviction won't show up when potential employers conduct background checks. Masters was 15 at the time of Hettrick's slaying in 1987 and came under suspicion when he saw the body in a field but didn't report it to police. Masters, then an aspiring horror fiction writer and doodler of macabre images, said he thought Hettrick's body was a mannequin placed there as a cruel joke around the anniversary of his mother's death. He was arrested more than 10 years after the slaying. Police obtained an arrest warrant based on psychological analysis of his drawings that investigators said pointed to Masters. Published: Thu, Feb 18, 2010

––––––––––––––––––––
 Subscribe to the Legal News!
 https://test.legalnews.com/Home/Subscription
Full access to public notices, articles, columns, archives, statistics, calendar and more
Day Pass Only $4.95!
One-County $80/year
Three-County & Full Pass also available