Supporters of a man convicted in a high-profile murder case more than two decades ago were given some encouragment today. A superior court judge agreed to allow DNA from the thumbnail of the victim to be tested against a database of 21,000 criminal offenders in Maine. Judge Carl Bradford granted the motion at the request of Dennis Dechaine who is serving a life sentence for the 1988 kidnap and murder of 12-year-old Sara Cherry of Bowdoin. Dechaine and his supporters have long sought a new trial. And at today's preliminary hearing, the judge also took another of Dechaine's request under advisement but denied a third.

Judge Carl Bradford will not grant a defense motion to recuse himself from the case--at least not right now. The judge says he is not ruling out that possibility down the road. The defense maintains that as the sitting judge in Dennis Dechaine's murder trial, Bradford is in the uncomfortable position of being asked to reverse himself in order to grant a motion for a new trial.

"It was significant that Judge Bradford held open the possibility that he would recuse himself, and we think that's very encouraging," says Bill Bunting, an active member of Trial and Error, a support group for Dennis Dechaine created in 1988.

The group has a mailing list of 6,000 names with dozens of active members like Bunting, who has visited Dechaine more than 200 times and says he will see him again this weekend. "He's a remarkable individual and he's been disappointed so many times in the past he knows not to get his hopes up. I wish the state of Maine could get to know him better."

Bunting is also encouraged that the judge will allow Maine's expanding DNA database of criminal offenders to be compared to a DNA sample from victim Sara Cherry's thumbnail, which shows DNA from at least one person other than Cherry. The last time the database was examined in 2005 there were only 4,000 people in the database to compare it with. Nine potential DNA hits turned up.

But a DNA analyst with the Maine State Police Crime Lab says because the Cherry sample is so incomplete and so degraded it will never be possible to find a perfect match no matter how many people are included. In fact, she says, she relaxed normally accepted testing standards to find the potential nine partial hits. And Deputy Attorney General Bill Stokes says that means there can never be any conclusions made from the testing.

"It doesn't have a lot of information to it," Stokes says. "It can be used to exclude but it can't be used to identify anybody, and so you run the risk when you do this of suggesting people are possibly included when, in fact, they're not."

More important, Stokes says the fact that Dennis Dechaine's DNA is not present in Cherry's fingernail doesn't establish that he didn't commit the crime. "As I've said from the very beginning, the evidence in this case of guilt against Dennis Dechaine is truly overwhelming. It was overwhelming back in 1988 and it's overwhelming now, and every judge and every court that's looked at the case has said the same thing."

But defense attorney Steve Peterson says he views the judge's ruling on DNA testing as a good step forward. He plans to use it as an investigative tool, something to show who can be excluded from the Cherry sample and who cannot, even though he acknowledges the sample is incomplete.

Over the years, several potential alternate suspects have been raised by the defense. But Peterson says it's not his burden to prove anything. "We have to prove by clear and convicing evidence that it's probable that a jury would have come to a different conclusion had it had the DNA evidence that we're working on right now."

But Deputy Attorney General Bill Stokes says the defense will face a challenge with that too. That's because Sara Cherry's fingernails used for testing DNA were in the possession of Dennis Dechaine's original defense attorney for 13 months.

Steve Peterson says he's confident he can establish a proper chain of custody that was never broken during that period. But Stokes believes most experts will say the time frame and lack of proper supervision of the sample allow too great a potential for contamination.

That issue is likely to be raised when the motion for a new trial is finally heard. In the meantime, a spokesman for Sara Cherry's family says the ongoing proceedings represent "continued harassment" for the Cherry family. Reverend Robert Dorr says the Cherry family has never been allowed to grieve privately for very long.

"There's been eight times that it's been before the courts, seven different judges," Dorr says. "To me, it's the continued harassment of the Cherry family from Dennis Dechaine from the cell that he occupies up in Warren."

Dorr says he has no idea what it will take to put the case to rest. The judge has taken under advisement a defense motion to introduce what it says is evidence of Dechaine's innocence from two expert pathologists who say Cherry's death occurred while Dechaine was in police custody.

Testing on the DNA database is expected to begin next week and take three months. Another hearing is expected to follow.