ROCKLAND (AP) – A motion filed this week on behalf of convicted murderer Dennis Dechaine seeks access to material in Maine’s DNA databank.

Lawyers for Dechaine say they believe seven people whose DNA are in the databank cannot yet be ruled out as having DNA that could match material found under the fingernails of 12-year-old Sarah Cherry.

Cherry was found murdered, mutilated and sexually assaulted in July 1988 in woods in Bowdoin.

Dechaine, who’s serving a life sentence, maintains his innocence. He is seeking a new trial based on test results showing the presence of DNA from an unknown male under the victim’s fingernails.

Defense team member Steven Peterson of Rockport said Thursday that this week’s motions were intended to ensure “both sides have all of the same information.”

The motions indicate that the state intends to argue “that male DNA taken from blood scrapings from underneath the fingernails of the victim in this matter are explainable by the failure of the medical examiner’s office to follow basic sanitation and hygiene measures in the use of autopsy implements,” Waterville attorney Michaela Murphy said in her motion.

The defense is seeking the autopsy reports to “see if the bodies autopsied were male or female, if fingernail clippers would have been used in any of the autopsies, and any other information which might establish if, in fact, cross-contamination could have occurred as the state is arguing,” Murphy wrote.

According to one motion, the state has provided the defense with summaries of interviews with medical examiners Drs. Ronald Roy and Henry Ryan “in which it is suggested that the medical doctors who performed autopsies for the state of Maine did not regularly wash their implements after using them on cadavers.”

Lawyers also are seeking all autopsy records from the state medical examiner’s office from July 8, 1986, through July 8, 1988.

Dechaine was convicted of the July 1988 murder in Bowdoin after police discovered his truck near where Cherry’s body was found mutilated and sexually assaulted. Receipts bearing his name were found in the driveway of the home where Cherry had been baby-sitting. The girl was bound with rope, pieces of which police say came from Dechaine’s truck.

AP-ES-10-08-04 1445EDT

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