Trial and Error

The Outcry for Justice in the Dennis Dechaine Case

Dear Friends and Supporters,

Oct 9, 2010

You are probably wondering what happened to the hearing on Dennis Dechaine’s petition for a new trial under the revised DNA statute that was scheduled to be held before September 1. Well, just as with several other proposed hearing dates going back to last January, it had to be postponed because Dennis’s defense team and the attorney general’s office had failed to reach agreement in their negotiations. At long last, however, agreement has now been reached regarding the testing of certain items of evidence (among those surviving items which the state did not incinerate, of course) for possible DNA.

Early December is now the most likely time the hearing will be held. Dennis’s defense team will then ask Judge Bradford to grant Dennis a new trial in which the jury would be allowed to hear all of the evidence which supports Dennis’s claim of innocence. The state presumably will oppose this request.

Whether it is proper for Judge Bradford—who must rule, in effect, on whether he made a mistake in 1989 by not allowing the DNA testing which Dennis offered to pay for — to remain as the judge on this case is a very good question. Most judges, we believe, would have recused themselves if only to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest.

While nothing has been added to the state’s case against Dennis since the trial back in March 1989, a great deal of important evidence supporting Dennis’s claim of innocence has since been brought to light. This includes the discovery of male DNA that is not Dennis’s under one of Sarah Cherry’s thumbnails; evidence of perjured testimony at the trial by two detectives regarding alleged confessions; and the findings of two world-renowned forensic pathologists, Dr. Cyril Wecht and Dr. Walter Hofman, that time-of-death evidence excludes Dennis as the killer. Any open-minded person must now at least have questions regarding Dennis’s conviction, and these questions can only be answered by a new trial in which a jury hears all the evidence.

These concerns are only at issue because Attorney General Janet Mills opposes a new trial. (Mills, and her predecessor, Steve Rowe, are the first attorney generals to be confronted with the unfolding of the substantial evidence of Dennis’s innocence, beginning with the publication of Jim Moore’s book Human Sacrifice in 2002. Among former Maine attorney generals, only Jon Lund, a veteran prosecutor, has called for a retrial.) Trial & Error believes that the opposition of Attorney General Mills to a new trial is indefensible, and brings dishonor to the state of Maine. We believe that Janet Mills’s position is contrary to the most basic belief in fairness and justice held by the vast majority of Maine people.

We would remind Attorney General Mills that if Dennis is innocent—as we believe the overwhelming weight of the evidence indicates— the killer of Sarah Cherry has not only gone free, but is in fact being protected by the efforts of her office to bury the Dennis Dechaine case.

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