“The issue for the trial court is
      not whether the testimony is
      correct, but whether the
      underlying data, methods and
      processes are such that they can be trusted to generate reliable
      information,” Atty. Ingram asserted.
      Citing an Ohio evidenciary rule, counsel said “the goal...is to keep ‘junk science’ from the jury and thereby promote reliability in the
      process of arriving at a verdict.”
      Former Center Middle School teacher and coach, Jay Dana, 58, acknowledged in a plea agreement reached last week that he was guilty in the date rapes of three woman, two in 2006 and another in 2011.
      In signing the plea agreement, Dana acknowledged the plea “is a complete admission of my guilt.”
      Following the 2011 allegations, Dana abruptly left is teaching post at Center Middle School, after a meeting with Superintendent Frank Lazzeri and Boardman Police Chief Jack Nichols.
      But it wasn’t until May, 2013, seven years after the allegations were first reported to Boardman police, that Dana was indicted by a direct presentment to a Mahoning County Grand Jury on the date rape charges.
      Then, it was more than two years until the case was fully litigated.
      During that span, Dana was allowed to live in Michigan, then in Florida and travel to New Mexico, after posting a $10,500 bond. Before the case was finalized, the bond was reduced to $5000 in the courtroom of Mahoning County Common Pleas Judge Maureen Sweeney.
      Dana’s sentencing hearing has been set for Thurs., July 23, before Judge Sweeney. In the plea deal he accepted, he will go to jail for 75 days and once released will be classified as a sex offender for the rest of his life.
      In two of the three cases in which Dana was charged, investigators found no evidence, save for the testimony of Dana’s victims. In a third case, a DNA sample was collected, then tested by the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification, and found to likely belong to Dana. The plea deal prevented presentation of such evidence, if the case went to trial.
      A month before Dana was to go on trial, his attorney, J. Gerald Ingram and co-counsel, Atty. Desirae DiPierro, proffered a motion to the court, seeking to prohibit testimony from an Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification analyst, Erika Jimenez.
      Atty. Ingram claimed in the motion that admitting the DNA evidence would violate Dana’s constitutional rights, as guaranteed under the Sixth (speedy trial) and 14th (due process) amendments.
      “Testimony [about the DNA]...violates [Dana’s] rights to cross-examine witnesses against him,” Ingram said in the motion proffered before the court.
      “The issue for the trial court is not whether the testimony is correct, but whether the underlying data, methods and processes are such that they can be trusted to generate reliable information,” Ingram asserted.
      Citing an Ohio evidenciary rule, Ingram said “the goal...is to keep ‘junk science’ from the jury and thereby promote reliability in the process of arriving at a verdict.
      “The defendant asserts that the methodology employed in the particular...DNA testing in this case did not yield an accurate result.”
      Atty. Ingram said in Dana’s case, Jimenez “had no personal knowledge of the methods and procedures utilized to compute the statistical estimates or the dataset upon which [DNA] statistical calculations were based.”
      Counsel further asserted his defense would have no opportunity to challenge “the way the calculations were performed and whether the results are reliable,” calling such findings “highly prejudicial, subject to distortion and misinterpretation” and amounting to “nothing short of a miscarriage of justice.”
      Before a ruling on the motion was made, Atty. Ingram withdrew it from consideration.
      Dana is expected to serve his 75-day jail sentence at the Mahoning County Jail.
      The death of his second wife, Michelle, on Christmas Day, 2010, at the couple’s home in Columbiana, remains under investigation.
      In a 9:20 a.m. 9-1-1 call made by Dana on that day, the former teacher and coach said he and his wife had been playing a drinking game and when he awakened in the morning, she was dead.
      Scientific testing of potential evidence in that death is continuing.