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April 21, 2010

What if Sarah Cherry's real killer still at large?

Kennebec Journal Staff

It sure is a wicked good thing we live in Maine, a state where the judicial system never makes mistakes.

Imagine how you'd feel if we lived in Connecticut, where James Calvin Tillman was wrongly convicted of rape in 1988 and had to wait, imprisoned, for 18 years for advanced DNA identification techniques to exonerate him.

What's worse for Connecticut, it took another two years for the same DNA technique to identify the real perpetrator, Duane Foster, who fortunately was already securely in jail for other crimes. Imagine if he had been at large, a continuing threat to assault other women.

At least Connecticut's prosecuting attorney, Edward R. Narus, had the courage and character to admit the state's grievous error: "We genuinely believed at that time that justice had, in fact, been served," he said when the real perpetrator, Foster, was sentenced recently (Kennebec Journal, 4/17/10).

But here in Maine, thankfully, we never make that kind of mistake.

Some say we did in the Dennis Dechaine case, which curiously also involves a horrible sex crime committed in 1988, and a man (still in prison after 21 years, actually) whom DNA tests strongly indicate -- still more curiously -- is innocent. But, as Assistant Attorney General William Stokes continues to assure us, "In Maine, we are different!" (Stokes' quote from a meeting about Dechaine with former state Rep. Ross Paradis of Frenchville).

And if Maine's judicial system is simply incapable of producing wrongful convictions, then there's not a chance the real perpetrator of the Sarah Cherry murder remains at large, where he might strike again. And again.

I'll bet you're really relieved we Mainers don't have Connecticut's problem. And aren't you mighty proud to live in a state that doesn't make mistakes?

Bernie Huebner

Waterville

bhuebner@roadrunner.com

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