AUGUSTA – The most poignant of impassioned pleas made Wednesday before the joint legislative judiciary committee on a bill that would make it easier to obtain a new trial based on post-conviction DNA analysis came from the family of 12-year-old Sarah Cherry, who was brutally tortured and murdered in 1988.

Attorneys for Dennis Dechaine, the man serving a life sentence in Maine State Prison for the Bowdoin girl’s murder, initiated LD 1907 in hopes of his exoneration one day.

On July 6, 1988, Cherry disappeared 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 his 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.

In 2004, state crime lab tests proved biological matter found under the victim’s thumbnails is that of an unidentified male and not that of Dechaine, but state law requires the defense to prove the DNA is that of the real perpetrator and that the sample was not contaminated. Dechaine’s defense team asserts current law is unconstitutional.

Dechaine’s attorneys say current law carries too high a burden of proof. In September, they withdrew a motion for a new trial, deciding instead to try to broaden the law.

The only other state with such a high burden of proof is Michigan. Essentially, one has to prove who the murderer is, his attorneys have said.

In testimony Wednesday, Sarah’s grandmother, Margaret “Peg” Cherry, told legislators that at every trial, hearing and appeal, the family must remain silent while they relive a nightmare.

“We are victims,” she said, “and now you want us to go through it again. Not only did we lose Sarah, we lost our lives, too.”

“I’m a very private person,” said Sarah’s mother Debbie Crosman, stopping momentarily to regain her composure.

Her privacy has been invaded at work, at home and at family functions, she said, by Trial & Error, an advocacy group supporting Dechaine, and the media. Last Christmas was the worst holiday since losing her child, she said, “because of this law.”

“I feel that we are here today under false pretenses,” the Rev. Robert Dorr of Waldoboro said, “primarily because those who support passage of LD 1907 think that the Legislature is the court of appeals.” Dorr serves as a spokesman for the Cherry family.

Referring to articles and editorials in a Portland newspaper, Dorr said Speaker of the House John Richardson is quoted as saying, “this bill is bigger than Dennis Dechaine.

“Why is it bigger than Dechaine?,” Dorr asked. “He is really the only one pushing for it.”

Speaking in favor of the DNA bill, former Rep. Judy Paradis, D-Frenchville, said to committee members, “you are the court of last resort.

“Don’t believe we are the poor state that we can’t do DNA,” she said. “We need your brains, we need your energy, we need your intelligence – for fair play and justice.”

Her husband, incumbent Rep. Ross Paradis, D-Frenchville, sponsored LD 1907.

“In my search for a workable and fair bill, I sought the most successful statute in the country,” Paradis said, which is the Innocence Project model statute being used by 39 states.

Stephen Saloom, policy director for the Innocence Project said, his group has been involved in the majority of the nation’s 174 DNA exonerations and has studied all of them.

“I am not here to testify about Dennis Dechaine,” he said. “I am here to testify about the overly restrictive nature of Maine’s post-conviction DNA access law.”

Twenty years ago, it was discovered DNA can connect a minute amount of biological material to the person from whom it came to an accuracy of up to 1 in 200 billion, Saloom said.

“Simply put, this discovery and the development of forensic science has revolutionized our criminal justice systems,” he said. “We once had to accept a certain level of uncertainty in criminal cases, but where biological evidence is probative that is no longer the case.”

“Some people say that LD 1907 is only about the Dennis Dechaine case,” private citizen Michael Lyons of Cumberland said. “Turning our backs on DNA evidence is saying to the rest of the country that Maine thinks science and justice are mutually exclusive.”

The joint legislative judiciary committee will hold a work session on LD 1907 at 1 p.m., Tuesday, March 7.