Trial and Error

Jun 12, 2012

Dennis Dechaine’s lawyer pushes DNA validity but at the hearing on the convicted killer’s bid for a new trial in Maine, the state tries to show how easily the evidence could have been contaminated.

PORTLAND — DNA evidence from Sarah Cherry’s left thumbnail would have been a “game changer” had it been allowed in Dennis Dechaine’s murder trial in 1989, the prisoner’s lawyer argued Tuesday.

“DNA’s been a topic almost from the beginning of the case. It still is today, almost 24 years later,” Steve Peterson said during the first day of a hearing on his client’s motion for a new trial.

Dechaine, 54, is serving a life sentence for the kidnapping and murder of 12-year-old Sarah Cherry in 1988. To get another trial, he will have to convince Superior Court Justice Carl Bradford that jurors would not have convicted him if they had known about the DNA.

The state maintains that the information is irrelevant, given the possibility for contamination and the unanswerable questions of how and when the DNA got on the thumbnail.

A partial DNA profile from an unknown male was extracted from the clipping after Dechaine’s trial lawyer, Thomas Connolly, got possession of it in 1992. Connolly asked for DNA testing of the thumb clipping before the trial, but Bradford, who was the trial judge, denied the request.

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By Ann S. Kim
Staff Writer