Colorado AG Exonerates Masters After 13

This week Tim Masters, 40, who now lives on the lonely outskirts of Greely, finally got an apology 13 years overdue.

Masters was the child accused of killing a young woman named Peggy Hettrick in 1987 when he was just 15 years old. For the next 11 years police and prosecutors struggled to justify a case against Masters despite no evidence linking the boy to the crime. Meanwhile Masters grew up, joined the Navy, and served his country honorably. He was arrested in 1998, convicted, and given life. 

Prosecutors and police did not perform their duties so honorably. The prosecutors, Terry Gilmore and Jolene Blair, were both censured for hiding evidence that could have exonerated Masters. Both were later appointed as district court judges despite their documented professional and ethical lapses. Masters languished in prison while they ruled from the bench for over nine years.

The lead investigator, Jim Frederick, is only now facing charges of felony perjury after two previous prosecutors found him innocent of wrongdoing. Only when prosecutor Ken Buck decided to run for U.S. Senate in 2010 and needed free publicity did Broderick finally get held accountable for framing the teen. Masters was once again used as a pawn for political and career advancement.

The apology finally came in the form of an official exoneration from the State Attorney General John Suthers, a man whose apparent lack of compassion, warmth and personality are often likened to that of a medieval inquisitor. The reprieve was granted three years after Masters had been found innocent through indisputable DNA evidence and won a $10 million federal law suit. The city of Fort Collins still refuses to apologize or admit any wrongdoing in how the case was investigated and prosecuted.

Masters told the Denver Post, "If we seek an eye for an eye, everyone's going to end up blind." However, Masters does seem to be pursuing his own brand of justice. In 2010 he gave $2,000 to the Committee for Judicial Justice, a group organized to dethrone the two Larimer County judges - Gilmore and Blair - who illegally prosecuted Masters. The group, and Masters, were successful. Gilmore and Blair were the only two judges out of 131 in the state up for retention that did not get reelected.

Now Masters is thinking about starting a Colorado Innocence Project to help those wrongly convicted and hold law enforcement and judges accountable to the same laws they prosecute with such extreme prejudice.

The problem is that Masters is just one man and his $10 million is just a drop in the ocean of unlimited resources the state has to prosecute the innocent and exact inhumane punishment. He of all people should know that we are not the country, the state, the people we once were, or think we still are.

I understand Master’s drive, his life was taken from him for the simple professional advancement of others and the amusement of the state. Others greed and ego cloaked in the legitimacy of the state and justice bullied Masters for 25 years and put him in prison for 10. Those responsible are still so arrogant and self-righteous to deny the man a formal apology of even admit that greed and ego and breaking the law to prosecute an innocent man are bad for public officials to do. It is a lost cause.

My advice to Masters is to quit this cause and this country. The problem is too big, too corrupt, and your bankroll is much too small. Find a place less distorted, where might does not make right, where personal ego and state power are not more important than individual justice; find that place and find peace - you've earned it.