ROCKLAND – A Superior Court justice has granted lawyers for a Bowdoinham man serving a life sentence for the 1988 murder of a 12-year-old girl access to reports of autopsies conducted by the state’s chief medical examiner.

Lawyers for Dennis Dechaine, 47, have suggested in their court papers that they suspect a biological sample from victim Sarah Cherry’s nails may have come from another cadaver examined by state doctors.

Justice Carl Bradford said in his order filed in Knox County Superior Court that Dechaine’s lawyers must ask for the reports one year at a time to alleviate the work burden on the Medical Examiner’s Office.

Dechaine is serving a life sentence at Maine State Prison in Warren. He maintains his innocence and is seeking a new trial based on DNA evidence found under the victim’s nails that is not his.

Dechaine was convicted of the July 1988 murder in Bowdoin after police discovered his truck near where Cherry’s body was found mutilated and sexually assaulted. Receipts bearing his name were found in the driveway of the home where Cherry had been baby-sitting. The girl was bound with rope, pieces of which police say came from Dechaine’s truck.

The judge states in the order that autopsy reports shall be considered confidential and may be disclosed only between lawyers. Information from the reports may not be disseminated further without an additional order from his court, he wrote.