Trial and Error

Jun 12, 2012

PORTLAND — Dennis Dechaine is in court today making a bid for a new trial.

Dechaine is now serving a life sentence for the 1988 murder and kidnapping of 12-year-old Sarah Cherry in Bowdoin.

Dechaine’s lawyer, Steve Peterson, is trying to convince Superior Court Justice Carl O. Bradford that the jury would not have convicted him had they been presented with DNA evidence extracted from a clipping of the girl’s left thumbnail. Testing indicates that the victim’s blood as well as a partial DNA profile from an unknown male donor are present on the nail clipping.

The defense says the DNA points to an alternative suspect. The prosecution, meanwhile, argues that the current precautions to guard against DNA contamination were not in place at the time and that the clippers at the autopsy were the likely source of the DNA.

So far today, the defense has called witnesses whose testimony speaks to the chain-of-custody of the nail clipping. Some of the events described took place nearly 24 years ago.

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By Ann S. Kim
Staff Writer