Hearing to review new evidence in Dennis Dechaine’s murder conviction has concluded

A two-day hearing to review new evidence in the case of convicted murderer Dennis Dechaine has concluded in Knox County Superior Court in Rockland. Dechaine has been serving a life sentence for the killing of 12-year-old Sarah Cherry in 1988, and is asking for a new trial based on DNA test evidence released two years ago. Kaitlyn Budion was in Rockland for the hearing.

Robbie Feinberg: So first Kaitlyn what is this new evidence that Dechaine’s attorneys say should warrant a new trial?

Kaitlyn Budion: Yes, so the new evidence really focuses on DNA test results from 2022 that were done with new updated technology. And those tests were done on six pieces of evidence from the crime. And I should note that with all of these DNA results, even with updated modern technology, they were only able to get incomplete DNA profiles. So none of this is enough information that would allow the DNA test results to be matched to an individual suspect. It’s all talking about if a person could have contributed DNA to this piece of evidence, or if they could not have contributed DNA to this piece of evidence. So it’s all about this exclusion, or could be included to Dechaine has, you know, volunteered, offered up his own DNA. And so with that comparing it to these impartial results, Dechaine can be excluded as a possible person to have contributed DNA to four of these pieces of evidence, but he could be a contributor of DNA on two of them.

And what has been the argument from Dechaine’s lawyers around this and why they argue that this would meet the bar for a retrial?

So Dechaine’s lawyers have really focused on the DNA results from her nails and from the scarf. They argue that the DNA from Sarah Cherry’s nails is blood, and that that blood must have come from Sarah Terry’s killer that she was conscious at the time of the strangulation and was fighting back. And so therefore, she was scratching and clawing at her attacker, and that is where that piece of DNA came from. It’s also important to note Dechaine has been excluded as the person who contributed the DNA to those nails. The second piece is that the nail DNA source could be the same as the DNA that is on the scarf used to strangle her. So the defense is arguing that this shows that another person was present at the time of the crime, and that is the person that killed her.

And are there any other subjects that police are even looking at besides Dechaine in this case?

It hasn’t gone into much detail in this hearing, the judge has really focused testimony on the DNA evidence. But these incomplete profiles are such that they can’t be matched to an individual. So the results that they have now cannot be used to directly link to a separate person, even if they had a specific suspect in mind.

And the state doesn’t agree with Dechaine’s lawyers assessment of this DNA evidence, what did they argue in court?

So the state really worked to poke holes in every step of the defense’s argument, really trying to make the point that none of these details can be known for certain, especially after so much time has passed? A key part of it is they argue that Sarah Cherry could have been unconscious at the time of her strangulation, or that she had already suffered several stab wounds, and may have simply been too weak to fight back and get blood from her attacker under her nails. They also say that even if she was fighting back, there’s no way to know that the DNA sample and the DNA results are from the blood at all, that it could be DNA that got under her nails, before the crime, or sometimes afterwards if there was contamination. And that because all of this is incomplete DNA profiles, the DNA from the nails can’t conclusively be matched to the DNA that is on the scarf.

In this case, it is very old, the original verdict came down nearly 35 years ago. Now, how has the age of this case and this evidence played into this latest hearing?

It has really played into the state’s arguments. In particular, they have said that the DNA samples have simply degraded over time, and that a lot of weight can’t be given to them because of that. They also say that DNA testing was really in its infancy in 1988, when this crime was committed. And so a lot of the procedures that we have in place now to prevent contamination weren’t in place at the time that all of this evidence was collected. And so it’s possible that any of these pieces of evidence could have been contaminated with the DNA of just about anyone in the many decades since the crime was committed.

And do we know when a judge might rule on this on this hearing?

At this point, we really don’t know. Given that this is a very dense subject matter, and a case with a really long record of events. This is not just Dechaine’s first appeal. There’s a lot of past testimony and things in the record to sort through.