PORTLAND – Maine’s highest court Thursday denied a Bridgton man’s appeal of his conviction and life sentence for the 1994 murder of a single mother who was stabbed repeatedly in her home while her 12-year-old daughter heard her screams from her bedroom next-door.

In its unanimous ruling, the Supreme Judicial Court rejected Michael Hutchinson’s argument that the collection of a DNA sample that linked him to the killing of Crystal Perry 12 years later violated his constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.

The justices also rejected Hutchinson’s claim that Maine’s sentencing law violated his right to a jury trial because it allowed a judge to impose the maximum sentence of life imprisonment based on facts determined by a judge, not a jury.

Hutchinson, 34, was convicted two years ago in the killing in southern Maine’s Lakes Region, where the killer and victim lived a couple of miles apart but apparently did not know each other. Perry, 30, was raped and stabbed more than 50 times.

The search for the killer hit a dead end until Hutchinson’s DNA sample – taken after his 2003 conviction for criminal threatening with a dangerous weapon – was checked against samples in Maine’s database of unsolved cases and matched the DNA found in Perry’s body.

Hutchinson, a self-employed mason who had never been under investigation for the killing, testified at trial that he had consensual sex with Perry before a stranger burst into the room, knocking him unconscious and stabbing her to death.

Perry’s daughter Sarah, who had moved to North Carolina, spoke at the sentencing. She recalled how she heard her mother’s cries and ran down her rural road to neighbors’ houses in the middle of the night in search of help.

In rejecting the challenge to DNA sampling, the high court said the state has a substantial interest in obtaining genetic information from felons because it can be used to identify and monitor them. Likewise, it said, “individuals who lose their liberty as a consequence of a criminal conviction also lose a large measure of their privacy, including their right to keep personally identifiable information private.”

Hutchinson also took issue with the trial judge’s reference to evidence of a sexual assault as an aggravating factor leading to a life sentence because the defendant was not charged with raping Perry and jurors never concluded that he did so.

The court, however, found that the life sentence was within the discretion of the judge, who based it on the savagery of the killing as well as the sexual assault.

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