Sketchy Evidence

July 14, 2007 2:11 PM

One day while crossing an empty field, fifteen-year-old Tim Masters happened to see a dead body. Twenty years later, he remains in prison, serving time for a crime that he almost certainly did not commit. A haunting, bizarre tale of a murder investigation gone wrong.
posted by william_boot (37 comments total)

.
posted by tehloki at 2:32 PM on July 14, 2007

To clarify, Tim Masters hasn't been in prison for twenty or even ten years. He probably shouldn't be there at all, but the post implies something that's not true.
posted by oaf at 2:50 PM on July 14, 2007

Yeah, the first and third links were a bit confusing. Can people read that much information out of somebody's picture?
posted by tehloki at 2:53 PM on July 14, 2007

oaf What browser are you using? It didn't resize my Firefox window. If you're using Microsoft's Internet Explorer, I recommend you try a different browser, IE is pretty bad about letting web pages do things they shouldn't.

On topic: This sort of thing is why I changed position from pro-death penalty to anti-death penalty. Its just too damn easy for someone to be wrongly convicted.

Its also why we need federal laws mandating that evidence must be preserved.
posted by sotonohito at 2:59 PM on July 14, 2007

Its also why we need federal laws mandating that evidence must be reread, rethought,re,again.
posted by Mblue at 3:07 PM on July 14, 2007

In FF: Tools > Options > Content > Advanced, uncheck first box.
posted by Citizen Premier at 3:10 PM on July 14, 2007

What browser are you using

Firefox. i can embiggin if I want. Beer eyes or soft eyes, eh?
posted by Mblue at 3:13 PM on July 14, 2007

I just finished reading John Grisham's An Innocent Man, a true story in which a man was sentenced to death for a crime he didn't commit.

Good thing Masters wasn't facing execution in this case.
posted by bwg at 3:15 PM on July 14, 2007

""There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all." -- Mario Savio
posted by Twang at 3:21 PM on July 14, 2007

On topic: This sort of thing is why I changed position from pro-death penalty to anti-death penalty. Its just too damn easy for someone to be wrongly convicted.

*Nods*

I know what you mean. The problem is that invariably there will be some horrific act that will push me back the other direction.

Generally now, I require such a preponderance of evidence of guilt to even consider it as being an appropriate punishment, I might as well describe myself as against the death penalty.
posted by quin at 3:24 PM on July 14, 2007 [1 favorite]

Twang
posted by Mblue at 3:27 PM on July 14, 2007

OK, enough of the derail regarding stupid computer shit.

This case is a huge injustice, and I can't believe that you folks are discussing how a photo is rendered rather than this case. Here is an obvious case where a fucktard cop is pushing his agenda in the face of common sense. I have no idea how a jury could be convinced of this, and maybe someone could point me to the incriminating evidence. Doesn't seem like there is much. Just some hardass cop who wants some kind of personal agenda met, and fuck all the consequences. Living out here in Colorado, I hope they do find the results of the crime, the truth not withstanding.
posted by Eekacat at 3:33 PM on July 14, 2007

What's unbelievable is how the prosecution has (seemingly) completely railroaded this kid. Their actions appear to be completely unethical, based solely on protecting their conviction stats rather than actually punishing wrongdoing.

I thought the justice system was supposed to be about, you know, justice, not, as Stephen Colbert puts it, just-ish.
posted by papakwanz at 3:35 PM on July 14, 2007

Wow, what a great read. Of course, innocent people get convicted a lot more than what we would like to believe. The Thin Blue Line anyone??
posted by j-urb at 3:43 PM on July 14, 2007

Mod note: Not so much with the browser-resize derail, please.
posted by cortex (staff) at 3:46 PM on July 14, 2007

What's unbelievable is how the prosecution will send you to prison if gains politically. Justice for my campaign, screw innocence.
posted by Mblue at 3:52 PM on July 14, 2007

I have no idea how a jury could be convinced of this, and maybe someone could point me to the incriminating evidence.

Have you ever been in a jury selection pool? I've been called to jury duty several times, made it up into the box for selection consideration every time, and have yet to be picked for a jury. In my experience, lawyers are looking to pick as dumb and manipulable a pool of people as possible, and as soon as someone showed the ability to think critically, he/she would be dismissed from the pool.

So, add up a completely unscrupulous prosecution with a box full of mild-mannered, easily-persuable people, and you have a jury that can return surprising verdicts. Plus, much was apparently withheld from their consideration.

What really blew me away about this case was that there were voices inside the police department all along that knew what was going down, and couldn't make it stop.
posted by LooseFilter at 4:04 PM on July 14, 2007

Without consulting an attorney, he and his dad did exactly what police asked.

NEVER TALK TO POLICE WITHOUT AN ATTORNEY!
NEVER TALK TO POLICE WITHOUT AN ATTORNEY!
NEVER TALK TO POLICE WITHOUT AN ATTORNEY!

Police officers are not your friends, they will not try to make things easy for you, they are not on your side.

They will hit you up with the line, "So you want an attorney? Jeez, you're gonna guilty. Do you want to look like you have something to hide?"

It's better to look guilty as hell as a free man than an innocent kid in jail for a long, long time.
posted by John of Michigan at 4:17 PM on July 14, 2007 [6 favorites]

quin: As far as brutal crimes go the way I figure it, life without parole has the same practical result as execution. That is, the perp is out of circulation, can't repeat the crime, etc. The difference is that if a mistake was made and the person who was convicted *wasn't* guilty we can set him free, give him a huge wad of cash in compensation, etc. Execution, IMO, is simply too perminant for any imperfect system to implement regardless of how horrible the crime is; and any human institution is imperfect by definition.

Since, as this case demonstrates, anyone can be at the wrong place at the wrong time and wind up falsely convicted, its possible that I will wind up falsely convicted, and if that happens I'd like to live in a system where I can't be killed by the justice system. Simple enlightened self interest.
posted by sotonohito at 4:40 PM on July 14, 2007

Yes, that's a human ear alright.
posted by shakespeherian at 4:46 PM on July 14, 2007

“Living out here in Colorado, I hope they do find the results of the crime, the truth not withstanding.”

Um, what? The results of the crime were found. It was a dead body. And “the truth not withstanding” means “despite the truth”.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 5:00 PM on July 14, 2007

Boy, that sure reads like Detective Jim Broderick needs to be incarcerated.
posted by Flunkie at 5:03 PM on July 14, 2007

Yeah, this is a horrible miscarriage of justice, one out of hundreds of thousands, at least.

There is a structural problem here, and that is that people doing the judging, the prosecuting, the jurors and even the public defender can often be really stupid. I think it might be a good idea to make prosecution and judging, at least for major crimes, done by much more professional people, in a uniform way.
posted by delmoi at 5:23 PM on July 14, 2007

I think it might be a good idea to make prosecution and judging, at least for major crimes, done by much more professional people, in a uniform way.

Yeh, when light speed's broke and I orbit Alpha Centauri(orange) and Alpha Beta(red) and Proxima Centauri.
I'll be away.
posted by Mblue at 5:53 PM on July 14, 2007

Ditto on the anti-death penalty stance. Many feel it is justice when it in fact only creates the possibility of further injustice.

And since it hasn't been said yet, the email in quin's Snopes link is pretty damn racist. Fox News biased against whites? Are you shitting me?
posted by dgbellak at 6:28 PM on July 14, 2007

That was meant as sarcasm, Ethereal Bligh, since apparently the truth means so little to our crime fighters in blue. Nothing has to make sense, and I'm sorry I had to spell it out for you.
posted by Eekacat at 7:37 PM on July 14, 2007

This reminds me a lot of the documentary, Paradise Lost: The Child Murders of Robin Hood Hills. In both cases, parochial, narrow-minded police officers went after sullen teenagers who liked horror movies and were into wearing black clothing, evidence be damned.
posted by jonp72 at 7:39 PM on July 14, 2007

Sounds like it was inspired by James Ellroy's My Dark Places, particularly the missing nipple:

Among the oddest features: Her left nipple and areola had been carefully removed and the front of her body was wiped clean. No blood
posted by strawberryviagra at 10:27 PM on July 14, 2007

God, you're right, strawberryviagra. What a creepy bit of synchronicity.
posted by palmcorder_yajna at 11:25 PM on July 14, 2007

I took some introduction to law classes, and I found out the American justice system is quite strange in some parts.

The objective of the prosecutor is not to find justice, but to find the defendant guilty.

The objective of the defense is not to find justice, but to find the defendant not guilty.

The objective of the judge is not to find justice, but to allow both sides to act in a fair and regulated fashion.

The objective of the jury is to decide which side makes more sense.

Once you realize this is how things work, arguing about how the prosecution was overzealous or political in prosecuting so-and-so just doesn't make sense. The same is true for the defense. The only person who is supposed to fight for "the truth" is the jury, which often is composed of a very select group of people (ie: those people who couldn't find an excuse to skip out).

It's quite disheartening how most people treat jury duty.
posted by meowzilla at 1:00 AM on July 15, 2007 [1 favorite]

j-urb writes 'The Thin Blue Line anyone??'

See also The Trials of Darryl Hunt. Currently showing at bittorrent trackers near your home.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 4:49 AM on July 15, 2007

meowzilla Yup, ours is an adversarial form of justice, and it has its flaws. In general though, it seems less open to abuse than systems in which the judge is supposed to take a position.

The real problem, as you observed, is the jury, and (I suspect) a jury selection system that has evolved to pick the least knowledgable, competent, and intelligent jurors.
posted by sotonohito at 4:55 AM on July 15, 2007

The prosecutor is obliged to to try to prove the defendant guilty, yes. But this case is about the cops, and how what I would consider to be a rogue cop railroaded an innocent person, while people within his department disagreed but somehow didn't let him get away with it. The DA took the evidence provided by the cop and used it, yes, but the cop should have never been able to take it to that point (sketchy "shrink" too).

Notwithstanding TV cop shows, the fact is that cops really don't work in any systematic, procedural way; often the lead just does whatever the hell he wants. Which is really not an effective system for dispensing justice OR discovering the truth.

Like the 'Paradise Lost' killings someone referenced above, the fact that this kid loved horror movies and knives, had longish hair, and drew weird horror-inspired drawings was the reason the cop picked him out as 'guilty.' And then proceeded to railroad him.

(BTW the jury's role really isn't to find out which side 'makes more sense.' But that's another derail.)
posted by miss tea at 5:23 AM on July 15, 2007

The real problem, as you observed, is the jury, and (I suspect) a jury selection system that has evolved to pick the least knowledgable, competent, and intelligent jurors.

Very similar to how the electoral process has evolved, sadly.
posted by psmealey at 6:28 AM on July 15, 2007

I empathize with Masters greatly.

I've freaked out people at many points in my life, but fortunately, none of them were fuckstick detectives on a murder case in my neighborhood.

I'd like a little more elaboration on Masters' state of mind throughout this. If he wasn't fascinated with death before, as the prosecution alleged, is he now? (and who the fuck casts stones at a kid who's lost a parent for being fascinated with death?)

thanks for the article.
posted by Busithoth at 10:29 AM on July 15, 2007

Today, Broderick says he's 100 percent certain Masters is guilty.

He calls it a high point in his career [ . . . ]

'Top' investigators often seem to exhibit a predatory personality very much like the people they're supposed to be catching. It's probably a requirement for being a successful investigator.

If you can play it straight enough to become a cop and you're intelligent enough to make it to detective and progress in the criminal justice industry further (as Broderick has) I imagine you could act with near impunity for quite some time if not indefinitely.
posted by Matt Oneiros at 2:53 PM on July 15, 2007 [1 favorite]

Nothing good will happen to you for addressing hate crime by Blacks against Whites, I'm pretty sure Fox News is biased against bad publicity. That's where that story would have lead. I don't know where Snopes got the idea there was a conspiracy or bias, it just needs to be socially unacceptable to address Black-on-White hate crime. For example, when you do it and people call you racist.
posted by erikharmon at 4:22 PM on July 16, 2007