LEWISTON — The state’s highest court has denied Dennis Dechaine’s latest appeal for a new trial, upholding a Knox County Superior Court decision that any new evidence he may be able to produce at trial would “not make it probable that a different verdict would result.”

Dechaine was convicted of kidnapping, sexual assault and murder of 12-year-old baby sitter Sarah Cherry in 1988 in Bowdoin. He had argued for a new trial based on newly discovered DNA evidence.

The Maine Supreme Judicial Court released its ruling Tuesday morning. This is the third time the state’s highest court has heard appeals from Dechaine, including an appeal to overturn his conviction and another upholding a court order for Dechaine to return certain exhibits used at trial.

Dechaine, 57, is serving a life sentence at the Maine State Prison in Warren.

In his appeal to the law court, Dechaine’s attorney, Steven Peterson, argued that the Knox County court erred when it ruled new DNA evidence would not alter the guilty verdicts.

According to court records, in preparation for his original trial, Dechaine’s attorney, who was then Thomas Connolly, filed a motion to conduct DNA testing on Cherry’s fingernails. At the time, DNA testing was considered “a radical and new technique,” according to the court.

The Maine State Police Lab used eight of Cherry’s 10 fingernails for blood-typing tests, and the state chemist who performed the testing concluded that all of the blood on the fingernails came from the girl, whose “hands were found bound and positioned near her neck, which was bleeding.”

The Maine lab consulted a lab in California, which advised that the possibility of getting good DNA results on what little blood remained on the two untested fingernails was not good, and that “high heat and humidity at the time of the murder also could have degraded the DNA,” according to court records.

That motion for DNA testing was denied.

In 1992, after an assistant court clerk issued a letter noting trial exhibits would be disposed of unless removed by counsel, Connelly retrieved the fingernail clippings. A year later, he sent them to a Boston laboratory for DNA testing.

Several months later, when prosecutors became aware that Connolly had the clippings, they asked the court to order the fingernails returned. Five months after that, the Boston-based CBR Laboratories issued its report concluding that there were two or more donors to the DNA extracted from Cherry’s fingernails, and excluded Dechaine as a donor, according to court records.

In the years since, there have been a number of motions in this case to hear DNA evidence, the latest of which was filed in 2008 when Dechaine argued for a new trial based on new evidence that emerged from DNA testing.

Dechaine also asked the court to consider additional evidence of the time of Cherry’s death, alternative suspects and any confessions or admissions in this case, in addition to the DNA evidence. The court denied most of those additional requests, and agreed to allow an alternative suspect theory only if the DNA evidence and analysis actually implicated another person.

It took several years for the motion for new trial, based on the DNA evidence, to be heard, at which time Dechaine asked for additional DNA testing on Cherry’s clothes. That request was granted, and her clothes, a bandana that had been used as a gag and a scarf that had been used as a ligature around her neck were submitted for testing, according to court records. That testing was done in late 2013, and Dechaine’s request for a new trial was heard.

The Knox County court denied his request in April 2014, ruling he had not shown by “clear and convincing evidence that a new trial would probably result in a different verdict.”

In its ruling, the Knox County court found there was a likelihood the DNA evidence had degraded and become contaminated over the years, that no alternative suspect could be tied to the DNA, and that other evidence presented during the original trial — including a receipt left at the scene where Cherry disappeared, the fact that Dechaine’s truck was found near the body and Dechaine emerged from the woods from the general direction of Cherry’s body, the rope used to bind Cherry was consistent with rope found in Dechaine’s truck, and the fact that Dechaine made several incriminating statements that he was sorry and surprised he killed the girl — provided evidence Dechaine’s “guilt is substantial.”

The Maine Supreme Judicial Court upheld that ruling in full.

As part of his argument for a new trial, Dechaine asserted that the trial judge abused his discretion in the case after presiding over hearings for more than two decades. The court found Superior Court Justice Carl Bradford conducted himself appropriately, and denied Dechaine’s claim of abuse of discretion.

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