William Bunting’s letter (Aug. 8) contains two erroneous claims regarding Dennis Dechaine’s conviction that I want to try to correct.
First, Bunting writes that, “The only significant evidence that remains in the state’s case is that someone removed incriminating objects from Dechaine’s truck.”
The state never contended any such thing. The state proved Dechaine murdered Sarah Cherry. Bunting’s claim assumes the truck was unlocked; it wasn’t.
The trial record shows the state and the defendant believed Dechaine’s truck was locked at all times relevant to the case.
Should Bunting find it difficult to examine the trial record, he could learn trial facts about the subject from reading pages 156-158 in “Human Sacrifice,” by James P. Moore, Blackberry Books, 2002.
Since the truck was locked, how could someone have removed items from it, as Bunting argues? They didn’t.
Bunting also errs in “narrowing up the state’s case” only to “incriminating objects” from Dechaine’s truck. The trial record contains ample evidence of guilt, real and circumstantial, that speaks for itself.
One of the decisions of Maine’s Supreme Judicial Court, written by former Chief Justice Armand Dufresne, discusses the significance of circumstantial evidence; lawfully adequate to support a conviction. His decision is extensive, even to the point of quoting Puck’s comment in Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”: “If circumstances lead me, I will find where truth is hid!”
I never tire of reading that case.
While I support Bunting’s right of expression, correctness is always well served.
John W. Benoit
Manchester
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