Dennis Dechaine, convicted in 1988 murder, seeks retrial based on new DNA evidence

DNA testing experts and a crime scene reconstructionist spent several hours on the witness stand of a Rockland courtroom, Thursday, as a defense attorney argued that Dennis Dechaine deserves another trial after spending more than three decades in prison for one of Maine’s most infamous murders.

Dechaine has maintained his innocence in the July 1988 murder and sexual assault of 12-year-old Sarah Cherry, after she was kidnapped from a home in Bowdoin where she was babysitting.

During a hearing that started Thursday in Knox County Superior Court and is expected to conclude on Friday, his defense team pointed to DNA testing from 2022 to argue that he deserves a retrial.

While Dechaine has lost multiple appeals , that testing revealed that his DNA was not on several items at the crime scene , though it couldn’t be excluded from some other items.

Meanwhile, state prosecutors have pushed back on the defense’s interpretation of the new testing, and they have maintained that there is still overwhelming additional evidence against Dechaine.

Dechaine’s attorney, John Nale of Waterville, spent a good portion of Thursday asking questions of the analyst who conducted the 2022 testing and another independent expert that the defense called as a witness.

During opening arguments, Nale claimed the new DNA evidence showed that blood found under Sarah’s fingernails did not belong to her, as previously stated in the original trial, but to another man who murdered her. He said the DNA in the blood did not match Dechaine’s.

DNA that could match Dechaine’s was found on a scarf that was used to strangle Sarah, and Nale argued that was because the scarf had belonged to his client and was stolen from his truck.

Gary Harmor, a forensic analyst at the Serological Research Institute in California who did the 2022 testing, testified that the DNA under Sarah’s fingernails could match that found on the scarf, but that his testing couldn’t single out individual people.

But another witness called by the defense, Rick Staub, who had analyzed the DNA evidence while working at a forensic lab, said there were similarities between the two samples and that they could still be analyzed despite the fact that they’d degraded over time.

“It means you’re going to have a tough time with the analysis, and you better be good,” Staub said.

In counterarguments, Assistant Attorney General Donald Macomber claimed the new DNA evidence has too many holes in it.

In response to Macomber’s questioning, Harmor said that it couldn’t be ruled out that Dechaine had touched certain items just because his DNA wasn’t detected on them. Conversely, he also said that just because DNA matching Dechaine’s was on an item, it doesn’t mean it was actually his.

On further questioning, Harmor also suggested that there are several factors that could influence the amount or quality of DNA samples, such as whether someone is or isn’t wearing gloves when they handle items, how much DNA they shed, and whether the evidence is left outdoors for multiple days.

“We think DNA evidence doesn’t amount to a hill of beans. It’s much to do about nothing,” Macomber said.

After the DNA experts finished their testimony, the defense called a final witness for the day, crime scene reconstructionist Roy Englert.

Englert testified that the blood under Sarah’s fingernails likely came from her scratching her killer in defense. Nale then showed a photo of Dechaine after he emerged from the woods the day he was arrested, without blood or marks that would have come from being scratched.

But Lisa Marchese, another state prosecutor, argued that the medical examiner who did Sarah’s autopsy had testified that people do not scratch and cause bleeding, and that she did not have the strength to do so, as a 12-year-old who had already faced several injuries before being strangled.

Englert asserted that she could have had the strength.

In order for Dechaine to be granted a new trial, his defense team will have to convince Justice Bruce Mallonee that the new evidence would lead to a different verdict this time around.

In December, Mallonee agreed to allow testimony in this week’s hearing from the two DNA experts, as well as two other crime scene experts who can only speak about the new DNA results. However, he denied the defense team’s request to call Dechaine’s former attorney as a witness.

In recent years, state prosecutors have continued to point to other evidence implicating Dechaine in Sarah’s murder, according to the Associated Press. After her kidnapping, her body was found two days later in the woods near where Dechaine had parked his truck when police picked him up the night she’d disappeared.

A car repair receipt and notebook with Dechaine’s name were found outside the home where she disappeared, and yellow rope binding her hands matched rope in his truck. Dechaine has claimed someone planted that evidence while he was in the woods doing drugs.

Meanwhile, Dechaine continues to have an ardent group of supporters who believe in his innocence, many of whom packed into the courtroom on Thursday. Throughout the day, he exchanged quick nods or words with them as he passed in and out of the courtroom.

The supporters, who are organized under a group called Trial and Error , have helped raise funds for his defense in recent years.

Jules Walkup is a Report for America corps member. Additional support for this reporting is provided by BDN readers.