Dear Mr. Abrahamson,
We read a Denver Post piece called "DA blasts Masters' team for using press," and went on to study your press release which it referenced. In the case of Tim Masters, many questions have been asked, by journalists and the public, about the conduct of the office over which you preside. Being the District Attorney of Larimer County is a difficult job, and we appreciate that you recently addressed a few of these questions.
In it you say, "We take our responsibility very seriously and very personally." We are glad to hear that. Your promise is, "If a clear mistake has been made in convicting Timothy Masters, I can assure you, I will be the first to act." We're glad to hear that, too. We like it when public servants take their responsibilities seriously, and we applaud your determination to correct any mistakes. So far, we're all in agreement.
We are fascinated by what you said about how "alternative theories, although of interest, do not provide exoneration..." The word choice neatly sums up the problem. It says that Masters being guilty is The Theory, while any others are dismissed as alternative, a perfectly good word for "other" which has, since the Sixties, become corrupted to mean "crackpot." It's been that way from the start, when the guilt of Tim Masters was accepted with righteous fervor by those in positions to do the most harm, and anyone who didn't follow the party line was shunned. We wish that other theories had been of more interest to the authorities.
Alternative theories do not provide exoneration, you are so right about that. Particularly when those theories are ignored and tossed aside by the police. Especially when the jury never gets to hear about those other theories. It's obvious that when any theory is made to disappear, that theory is not able to provide exoneration. So, once more, we agree.
Where we part company is when you go on to say, "Every precaution available is taken to ensure that the cases we prosecute are handled justly and fairly and only the guilty are convicted." If that were so, this present discussion would not be taking place, because Tim Masters would never have been arrested, or charged with killing Peggy Hettrick.
There's another thing in your statement that we agree with - but for different reasons. It's the part that goes, "...we felt it inappropriate to use the press to influence public opinion…" See, as long as we're talking about using the press, who was it that provided the Cold Case Files TV show with film and interviews and all kinds of cooperation, which they used to accomplish the character assassination of Tim Masters? Anybody you know? When the media say the police are doing a good job, does that constitute the manipulation of public opinion? Or is it only manipulation when the press says the police messed up?
If you mean by the word "influence" that the press can educate and illuminate, can show what wasn't shared with the public in open court or any other place - well, what's wrong with that? What's wrong with all the truth being exposed? It's not as if the defense needed to call the media and say, "Pssst, we've got a story for you." It's been there all along, part of the public record. All it needed was to have attention called to it.
By the way, speaking as part of the press, we assure you that we have never, to this day, been contacted by any member of the defense team. Our June 12th exclusive article titled "Free Tim Masters Because" was inspired entirely by our own strong convictions, formed over a period of years, about this case which has been a blot on the face of justice since Day 1. We get the impression that you deplore the number of column inches and minutes of film that have captured the public attention recently. We kind of agree with you on that, too. We're happy, naturally, that so many other media outlets are taking an interest, and are doing such a thorough job of bringing the public up to speed on the many issues involved. But this attention from the press would have been more timely back in 1999 when Masters was convicted. If we'd had our way, national attention would have been glued to the case right then. If we'd had our way, millions of voices would have been raised against the absurd proposition that, here in America, someone could be sent to prison for life on the basis of his drawings.
Because that's what it all boils down to, and there's no point in denying it. Sure, the DNA issue and the evidence storage issue are important. Even the fact that a minor was interrogated without a parent or lawyer is important. But the bottom line is, Masters was arrested and convicted on the say-so of forensic psychologist Reid Meloy, whose alleged science is not much of an improvement over the ancient art of foretelling the future by reading chicken guts. The taxpayers shelled out many thousands of dollars for the "services" of this hired "expert" whose opinions the prosecution had the gall to define as evidence. It's a shame that those dollars were not instead spent on better facilities for the storage of physical evidence, a great deal of which seems to have been misplaced, misrepresented, misfiled, and misappropriated in the course of this two-decade-long fiasco.
The police and prosecution team acted unprofessionally, and had the media done a better job back then, maybe things wouldn't have gone the way they went. This case has some horrendous problems which the press should have shared with the public long ago. When you look at reports that were published at the time, there was plenty to scratch your head about. If the media had exerted pressure back in the beginning, maybe the police wouldn't have thrown evidence away, whether there was a law requiring them to keep it or not. Maybe they would have investigated other available suspects. Maybe they would have obtained a conviction that everybody could be comfortable with.
We have a few more questions. The press release said, "Little has been written or expressed from the viewpoint of the prosecution." You're kidding, right? Remember what Jolene Blair, then of the DA's office, said about Tim Masters? "Who else could it possibly be? Nobody else had a motive, nobody else had the opportunity, nobody else had the weapons." She said all that with a straight face, and without the slightest indication of irony, or any consciousness of the ridiculousness of her words. When the prosecution feels a need to express such viewpoints it is, quite frankly, better that the prosecution should just keep its lip zipped.
Let's talk about what you call "Timothy Masters' inability to pass a polygraph…" What we heard was that the results were "inconclusive," which isn't quite the same as "inability to pass." By the way, is it true that you guys can't locate the original documentation to back up your claims about the lie-detector test?
"My office agreed to have the DNA testing done in the Netherlands if the defense would agree that the DNA test results would be made known to both the defense and the prosecution. The attorneys for Mr. Masters refused our offer." That's a quote from your press release. Excuse us, we're not lawyers, but we're pretty sure the way it works is: the burden of proof is on the prosecution, and the job of the defense is to protect the rights of the accused. "The only reason my office had the Colorado Bureau of Investigation perform some limited DNA collection was so that the truth would be known, versus hidden by the defense." That's a bit disingenuous. Especially when we hear that your office defied the orders of a judge, took the evidence without permission, and acted without authorization. Not so?
You say "a jury found that evidence of guilt was overwhelming," and you go on to say, "A jury has spoken to the issue of truth by finding guilt beyond a reasonable doubt." Those words could fool someone unfamiliar with the details of the feeble case against Tim Masters. The members of the jury were treated like mushrooms: kept in the dark, and fed manure. That jury was so disgracefully manipulated and under-informed, it's a daunting task to even list the wrongs done to those jurors, which led to their convicting him. By the way, we hear that at least one juror, the blinders having been ripped from his eyes, showed up at a recent hearing to denounce Officer Broderick in person.
"There was also a finding by the Court of Appeals," you say, "and the Supreme Court that the evidence was accurately and fairly presented." That's one way of putting it. But we recall that the three dissenting judges of the Colorado Supreme Court were quite eloquent in their disagreement. Justice Michael Bender, for instance, wrote, "The sheer volume of the inadmissible evidence so overwhelmed the admissible evidence that the defendant could not have a fair trial. ..."
You warn against "accusations and innuendo that sound dramatic in the media…" Speaking of things that sound dramatic in the media, do you mean, for instance, the drama of an innocent person whose case is damaged because so much evidence has mysteriously disappeared and been purposely destroyed? Or the drama of a group of dedicated supporters who have fought for years to correct this glaring miscarriage of justice? Or the drama of deciding whether the behavior of the police and prosecutors signifies monumental, unparalleled carelessness or…something else?
Often, there's a good reason why things sound dramatic: because they are important, meaningful, troubling, and too outrageously awful to be tolerated in a just society.
You've been quoted as saying, "… we're interested in one thing in this case, and that is that the truth be known. Whether the truth be that Masters continued to spend the rest of his life in jail, as the jury had determined, or whether or not there was some error that needs to be corrected." Hold on a minute. That confusing statement is practically meaningless, with the way it mixes up cause and effect. In logic class, it would get a D-minus. If Masters spends the rest of his life in prison, that will be a result of the proceedings - but it will not be the truth about what happened that night so long ago.
By the way, we've been wondering if it's true that the prosecution denied having ever thought of Richard Hammond in connection with the Hettrick murder. Is it true that the prosecution was caught red-handed in that lie by the defense? Because, you see, if the thought of Richard Hammond as a suspect had never crossed anyone's mind, down at the police station or in the DA's office, that would be one thing. It would only indicate that those agencies were not staffed by the brightest bulbs on the Christmas tree. But when the Richard-Hammond-as-suspect concept actually was thought of, and suggested, and even insisted upon by some of the officers, and then when others on the force willfully and knowingly buried and destroyed all traces of Richard-Hammond-as-suspect - well, surely you can see that it's a whole different issue.
And all this talk about Hammond might tend to make us forget something basic and elementary. It's not the responsibility of the Masters defense team to prove who killed Peggy Hettrick. Their job is to show reasonable doubt that Tim Masters did it. If the jury had been allowed to know what it should have known at the trial, there would unquestionably have been an overabundance of reasonable doubt. If there's another trial, this time they will know it.
In the spirit of fairness, we offer you a chance to express yourself in your own words, which would be published as an article on Earthblog.net, as well as forwarded to all the media sources which we have distributed this open letter to. Your thoughts would be published unedited, uncensored, and in their entirety.
Sincerely,
Marc Madow, Content Producer
Earthblog.net
