Fort Collins Police lieutenant Jim Broderick has been in court much of the week contending with eight perjury counts against him for his role in the prosecution and conviction of Timothy Masters in 1999. He “denies that he made any false statement” in the case, says his attorney, Patrick Tooley, of the murder conviction that was overturned in 2008 (via 7News). Broderick, the lead investigator in the case, was indicted by a grand jury last summer on charges that he lied repeatedly in the case against Masters.

Oddly, the bone of contention might seem trivial: the color of Masters’ mother’s hair. Broderick claimed her hair was red, a lie, according to a grand jury, that played into a prosecutorial narrative depicting the color of murder victim Peggy Hetrick’s hair also as red, providing a psychological motive for the slaying, writes the Fort Collins Coloradoan. Contrary evidence suggested that Masters’ mother’s hair was not red, but it was not introduced in court. Broderick’s defense calls the perjury allegation “inflammatory.”