When the attorney general’s commission reported “No official misconduct” in the Dennis Dechaine case, the Sun Journal swallowed it without question, and heralded it loud and clear as the final word on that topic.

But how can that be the last word when court records and the AG’s own files show that officials concealed evidence, destroyed evidence and gave false testimony? The proof is public information now, posted for all to read online.

What did that commission have to outweigh this documented proof of improper conduct? How can it explain the detectives testifying that they were reading Dechaine’s incriminating admissions from their notes when no such quotes are in those notes? Or the prosecutor’s false statements to the jury and others?

If the commission really had anything, why did it fight all the way up to Maine’s highest court for the right to keep it secret? Why fight to hide facts that would exonerate the officials of wrongdoing?

Astoundingly, the Sun Journal never asks them. I wonder why?

When I was a boy, a man told my friends and me he’d caught a 24-pound trout in Eagle Lake, but he wouldn’t show us the fish. “If you don’t believe me,” he said, “I’ll show you the lake.”

The commission’s story sounds the same to me.

The Sun Journal needs to consider President Reagan’s wisdom: “Trust, but verify.”

It does its readers no favor when it helps hide secrets.

James P. Moore, Brunswick

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