To the editor:
Since January, 1989, when Dennis Deschaine was first denied his request for DNA testing on the evidence surrounding the gruesome death of Sarah Cherry, this case has been massively tilted in the State’s favor.
In the 22 years hence, a plethora of new evidence has been unearthed and/or substantiated that both the State and the Court do not want considered in new proceedings; proceedings that surely should result in a new trial for the 52-year-old Madawaska native.
What is the Attorney General’s office hiding this time?
The evidence, some of it sealed in the State’s lockboxes for years, includes perjury on the part of testifying police officers; officers who were allegedly reading from their notes at the first trial, but when those notes were finally unsealed we learned they said something very different than what the jury heard as revealed in trial transcript.
The time of death questions raised are clearly the most evocative, but so are the highly improbable mathematical statistics of Deschaine’s identifiable assets being discovered at and near the crime scene as they were — allegedly; odds greater than 99:1.
And why did the State incinerate evidence; hairs found on Sarah’s battered body that would have exonerated Deschaine and perhaps identified her killer? As we now know, the male DNA found under her thumbnail did not belong to Deschaine.
Why is the State so reticent to have all the facts on the table, side by side, at the same time? Why does it want a potentially innocent man to remain in prison for life for a crime a massive amount of evidence says he did not commit? Why do the judge and the State insist on playing loophole games to keep information from a potential jury?
Understand, Deschaine is not looking for a get-out-of-jail free card. He is only seeking a new trial — a fair one.
Why is the State so opposed to that? Why?
Caribou
