Trial and Error

Jun 13, 2012

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 Dechaine’s motion for a new trial.

Dechaine, 54, is serving a life sentence for kidnapping and murdering 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.

view full story

By Ann S. Kim
Staff Writer