With the O.J. Simpson trial behind us, now is the time for the believers of justice to get back to work and focus on the Dennis Dechaine case.

We all remember the fateful day in July 1988, when 12-year-old Sarah Cherry was abducted, tortured, and then murdered. This case, which has become Maine’s most heinous, has left many people looking for answers to questions that were never answered.

For years, family members, friends and Trial & Error members have tried to make sense of this open-and-shut case. There were just too many loose ends.

Sure, you’ve got the state’s theory of how the murder happened, but nothing adds up. How did Sarah get from the Henkel home where she was babysitting to the murder scene? No one knows! A witness testified that they had seen a small girl (probably Sarah) with a man in a red truck. The description of that man did not match Dennis’ and more; Maine’s crime lab testified that after searching Dennis’ truck thoroughly, “Sarah had never been in his truck.” Even tracking dogs found no scent of Sarah in the truck or in the woods nearby; not until the third day, after police testified hearing noise in the woods at night, did the dogs find Sarah’s body.

The state’s crime lab, probably similar to L.A.’s “sewer,” could not come up with a time of death and did a shabby job, at best, of investigating this crime. Dennis, a young farmer from Bowdoinham, was the perfect scapegoat. The state based their trial solely on circumstantial evidence. Dennis was in the area where Sarah’s body was found, so the state immediately focused on Dennis without investigating further.

So, thanks to O.J. and DNA, we now have an excellent chance of freeing Dennis. The crime lab’s Judith Brinkman testified in 1989, that if DNA could have been used, and if there was no match between Sarah’s skin sample and Dennis, Dennis would be exonerated.

DNA was done on Sarah’s fingernail scrapings and then on Dennis’ blood; there’s no match. But the state seems to believe DNA is to be used solely for prosecution and not for defense.

The DNA work is done. Scientifically, it is not Dennis. Why is the state of Maine so adamant about incarcerating this young man? What are they hiding? Dennis is innocent, set him free. Don Dechaine Madawaska