Dechaine attorneys withdraw bid for new trial in murder case

PORTLAND – Convicted killer Dennis Dechaine’s defense team withdrew its bid for a new trial Friday, saying the burden of proof surrounding Maine’s post-conviction DNA law is “unconstitutionally high.”

A week of hearings was to have begun Friday at Cumberland County Superior Court on a motion for a new trial for the 47-year-old Bowdoinham man.

He is serving a life sentence at Maine State Prison in Warren for the 1988 torture-murder of 12-year-old baby sitter Sarah Cherry of Bowdoin.

Cherry disappeared on July 6, 1988, from a home where she was baby-sitting. Her body was found days later. She had been raped with sticks, strangled with a scarf and stabbed repeatedly with a small blade in the head, neck and chest.

Dechaine wandered out of the woods near where Cherry’s body was eventually found. A car repair bill bearing Dechaine’s name was found outside the home where Cherry disappeared, and rope used to bind her matched rope from his truck and barn. Dechaine told police he had been fishing but later admitted he had been injecting speed.

Police say Dechaine confessed to the crime, but his supporters say there was no confession. They have alleged police misconduct. They say all the evidence was planted to divert attention from the real killer.

Assistant Attorney General William Stokes said the defense team simply came to court Friday ill-prepared to make its case.

To win a new trial, Dechaine’s lawyers were required to provide convincing evidence that DNA came from her killer, that the evidence was properly handled, and that it outweighed all of the other evidence that led to his conviction.

Justice Carl O. Bradford limited Friday’s hearing to DNA evidence that was not available when the case went to trial. But he rejected Dechaine’s request to discuss, among other things, an alternative suspect.

If Dechaine lost, then his only recourse would have been the state supreme court.

Instead, the only hope of Dechaine winning a new trial is to change Maine law, lead defense attorney Michaela Murphy said outside the courtroom. That will take an act of the Legislature and a couple of years, she said. “This is Mr. Dechaine’s last forum. We’ve got to have a fighting chance.”

Tests of blood found under one of the victim’s fingernails showed the presence of male DNA from someone other than Dechaine.

The defense claims to have an alternative suspect who refused DNA testing.

Although state crime lab tests have proven biological matter found under the victim’s thumbnails is that of an unidentified male and not that of Dechaine, state law requires the defense to prove the DNA is that of the real perpetrator and that the sample was not contaminated. Dechaine’s lawyers said those stipulations are unconstitutional.

Some 30 friends and family of the victim and defendant passed through two metal-detecting checkpoints before entering the courtroom around 9 a.m. Friday.

Defense attorneys and prosecutors shifted in and out of the judge’s chambers for two hours Friday morning before the hearing actually got under way.

At first, Dechaine attorney Steven Peterson of Rockport asked the judge to withdraw the motion for a new trial “without prejudice,” meaning the action could be brought again.

In chambers, the defense lawyers had asked the judge to “certify” his recent order on which evidence could be presented at the hearing. Had the judge granted the request, the defense might have had a “fighting chance,” Murphy said, explaining the action would have broadened the scope of evidence that could be presented.

Stokes moved to dismiss the motion for a new trial with prejudice, meaning it could not come before the court again. “At some point, there has to be finality,” Stokes said.

“The state is ready to proceed,” he said, telling the judge it seemed Dechaine’s lawyers were saying the DNA “has no connection to this crime.”

“Mr. Stokes is absolutely wrong when he says we don’t have the goods in this case,” Murphy said after the hearing. All people involved with the case who had any contact with the victim’s body have been ruled out as matches for the “unidentified male” DNA sample, she said.

Murphy said she believes the state has argued that in 1988 and 1989 workers in the state Medical Examiner’s Office used “sloppy practices.”

“We don’t believe that to be true,” she said.

The judge took the state’s motion to dismiss under advisement and gave the lawyers seven days to file arguments.

“We believe [Maine’s law] is unconstitutional,” Colin Starger of the Innocence Project said after the hearing ended. The nonprofit, based at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York, was created by Barry C. Scheck and Peter J. Neufeld in 1992 to handle cases where post-conviction DNA testing of evidence could yield conclusive proof of innocence. The organization is working with Dechaine’s defense team.

As friends and family of Sarah Cherry left the courthouse, her grandmother, Peg Cherry of Lisbon Falls, walked away from reporters, saying, “I hope this is the end. They just don’t have anything.”