1:00 AM That could clarify whether thumbnail DNA evidence came from contamination during the autopsy, he says.

By Ann S. Kim akim@mainetoday.com Staff Writer

PORTLAND - More testing of items from the investigation of Sarah Cherry's murder could help clarify whether the DNA found on one of her thumbnails came from contamination, a witness said Wednesday at a hearing on Dennis Dechaine's motion for a new trial.

click image to enlarge

Dennis Dechaine, right, and defense attorney Steven Peterson.

John Ewing/Staff Photographer

Swabs of certain items from the 1988 kidnapping and murder of the 12-year-old Bowdoin girl have already been tested for male DNA and come up negative. Those items include sticks that were used to assault the girl, the rope that bound her hands and the scarf that was over her mouth.

Witness Rick Staub, the forensics laboratory director of a company in Texas that handled some of the tests, testified that there could be value in doing additional DNA analysis on evidence in the case. If DNA similar to the thumbnail DNA was found on other items, it would make it unlikely that the thumbnail DNA came from contamination during the autopsy.

The partial DNA profile extracted from the girl's left thumbnail is at the center of Dechaine's attempt to get another trial. On Wednesday, his lawyer, Steve Peterson, continued to present witnesses' testimony aimed at convincing Superior Court Justice Carl Bradford that jurors would not have convicted Dechaine in 1989 had they known about the DNA.

One of those witnesses, Rick Staub, said it's hard to imagine that DNA was transferred to the thumbnail by clippers used in the autopsy -- as Deputy Attorney General William Stokes has argued is the most likely scenario -- unless the clippers had wet blood on them and were used immediately afterward.

Here is the original post:
Dechaine witness: Test more for DNA