Expert: Case shows need to save evidence
By Kevin Vaughan, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)
Published January 24, 2008 at 12:30 a.m.
Forensic expert Barry Scheck says Masters case points to importance of preserving evidence.
The science that led to the freeing of Tim Masters is evolving quickly, allowing the discovery of DNA in places where it couldn't be found just a few years ago.
"You swab the inside of a gun and you get skin cells from the last person who loaded it," said Barry Scheck, one of the country's leading forensic experts. "You find blood that seeped into the handle of a knife."
Scheck, an attorney best known for his work in the O.J. Simpson murder case, said the Masters case illustrates that even old evidence can yield new clues and underscores the importance of preserving it.
"Advancing methods for DNA testing and for the discovery and extraction of biological evidence really commands that attention be paid to the preservation of evidence because, you know, there's cases that are 10, 20, 30 years old," Scheck said.
Scheck is a director at the Innocence Project, which seeks to use DNA evidence to free people wrongly convicted.
A task force formed last year by Gov. Bill Ritter concluded that evidence in serious cases such as murder, rape and kidnapping should be kept for as long as a convict is in prison.
In the past, that hasn't always happened. While evidence was kept indefinitely in unsolved cases, it was sometimes destroyed after someone was convicted and had exhausted all appeals.
Masters, 36, was arrested in 1998 and convicted the following spring of the 1987 murder of Peggy Hettrick in Fort Collins, despite a lack of physical evidence, including DNA, tying him to the crime.
Over the past several years, a team of attorneys and crime scene experts laid the foundation for a new trial, and as part of that submitted Hettrick's clothing to a lab in the Netherlands for sophisticated DNA testing.
Richard and Selma Eikelenboom were able to use new techniques to extract skin-cell DNA from Hettrick's blouse and panties that matched the genetic fingerprint of a former boyfriend.
That discovery, confirmed by independent testing at the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, led a judge Tuesday to toss out Masters' conviction and free him.
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