Convicted Murderer Loses Final Federal Appeal

A judge this week rejected Dennis Dechaine's final federal appeal of his murder conviction.

Dechaine is serving a life sentence for the 1988 kidnapping and murder of 12-year-old Sarah Cherry, whose body was found in the woods two days after she disappeared. The preteen was walking to her first babysitting job in the town of Bowdoin when she was abducted, sexually assaulted, strangled with a scarf, and stabbed.

The evidence against the then-30-year-old Bowdoinham farmer included his truck being parked near the crime scene, rope in that truck that was used to bind the girl's hands, and Dechaine himself seen stumbling out of the woods where her body was found. In addition, a mechanic's repair bill with his name on it was found in the driveway of the home where Cherry was supposed to be babysitting. Dechaine's alibi to police was that he spent the day doing drugs and that's why he was in the woods.

The Portland Press Herald reports that, on Monday, a three-judge panel in Boston's First Circuit Court denied Dechaine's latest appeal of his conviction, marking the end of his 27 year campaign that has seen many, many requests for appeal hearings. His only chance of further review would be to file a post-conviction petition in state superior court that would point to a medical examiner's report that he could argue was not emphasized enough during his original trial. His lawyer says that report would show that Dechaine was with police when Cherry died and so couldn't have killed her.

Dechaine has maintained his innocence since his conviction and saw a ray of hope when DNA evidence from under Cherry's fingernails turned out not to belong to him. But the courts argued that the evidence could have been contaminated and refused to consider it grounds for overturning his conviction. Many people believe he was wrongly convicted, including a non-profit group 'Trial and Error' that was formed by a childhood friend of Dechaine's.