Maine's legislators consider a new office for the review of criminal convictions

Success in other countries

Everywhere in the country there is a state and local level. The first was opened in 2007 in Dallas County, Texas, where it led to Ben Spencer in August 2024. Spencer had 34 years in prison for a murder he had not committed.

In New England, a unit of Connecticut led a judge in 2012 according to the national register for relief.

In Maine Milliken said that there were two men behind bars, of whom she said that they could be innocent: Foster Bates and Dennis Dechaine. Both have exhausted numerous vocations while they are serving lifelong prison terms. However, these appeals were restricted by legal deadlines and close restrictions on the type of new evidence that they can introduce according to the procedure.

“We have statutes that make it very difficult to incorrectly accused men and wrongly convicted men,” said Milliken. “There are laws in this state that make it very difficult for these men to argue their innocence.”

Dechaine was found guilty in 1989 for murder and rape of 9-year-old Sarah Cherry. He retained his innocence and recently lost the efforts to a new process after he had pointed out new DNA test results that he argued.

A jury was guilty of murder in the death of his neighbor Tammy Dickson in 2002. He lost his attempt to receive a new legal proceedings in December 2023 after a rare two -day hearing focused on new evidence that he was not aware of in court.

On Monday, Milliken testified by Bates and pointed out a six-hour video of investigators, which another suspect interviewed-the kind of incident that Bates hoped to be convinced of an unity of integrity.

“If the jury had heard this relieving evidence of the feelings of guilt by the alternative suspect,” the result “would” not be guilty, “wrote Bates. “The judge of the court did nothing and my judicial lawyers did nothing.”

Is it necessary?

As part of the proposal, the General Prosecutor's office would have to create a report for legislators on the work of the unit every year. They would also have to notify state supervisory authorities if they discover the public prosecutor's misconduct.

In a short written statement on Monday, Attorney General Aaron Frey said that he sees the value when setting up an unity of integrity of convictions. As he testified in 2021, Frey said that he was confident that his office can accommodate a unit separately from his criminal department (pursuing murders and other serious crimes).

The Criminal Law Commission for Criminal Law, which comprises and was set up and was set up by active and retired judges, defenders and prosecutors to advise the legislators about proposed changes to the Criminal Code, rejected the law on Monday.

The group's written certificate states that the legislation was unnecessary and that “current processes potentially identify and address problematic convicts”.

They questioned with the fact that the number of people who can apply for a review and how often they can apply was not limited. The draft law demands that the public prosecutor's misconduct will be forwarded to state supervisory authorities, but not to misconduct by defenders.

Others supported the law on Monday because the officials in Main's Criminal Legal System would blame. Logan Perkins, a public defender who represented people in inquiries about the conviction, said that these stakeholders can not only include prosecutors, but also police officers, medical examiners and employees for crime laboratories.

“There are bigger problems and the patterns that showed.

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