Court hearings are intended to establish fact, and testifiers swear to tell the truth, the whole truth. Yet, during the recent DNA hearing regarding the Dechaine case, prosecutors from the attorney general’s office inserted half-truths and falsehoods into the official record from which the judge will make his final decision as to whether or not Dennis Dechaine will get a new trial.

Prosecutors stated that there was blood on Dechaine’s shoes, and inferred that a handprint on the back of his T-shirt was that of the 12-year-old victim. What they did not say was that it could not be determined if the blood was human blood or animal blood; possibly it was blood picked up at the chicken processing facility that Dechaine had just visited. And they did not say that the hand print was adult sized, likely the result of Dechaine slapping a mosquito.

Prosecutors repeatedly stated that Dechaine had confessed, when, in fact, there is no such proof. Two claims made by police are contradicted by their own contemporaneous notes, and two other hearsay reports cannot be substantiated.

Given that these prosecutors are intimately familiar with the record of this case, it may be assumed that these were calculated statements intended to deceive the judge. As to their motive, perhaps it was because the complete facts do not comport with the results that the attorney general’s office is seeking.

William Bunting

Whitefield

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