YOUNGSTOWN — A man convicted of raping a Youngstown State University student in 2001 had another day in court Tuesday.

In December, the Ohio Supreme Court ordered a new evidentiary hearing for Chaz Bunch, 39, which was held Tuesday before Mahoning County Common Pleas Court Judge Maureen Sweeney.

At the heart of the hearing is whether the jury in Bunch’s original trial may have been prejudiced by ineffective defense counsel.

Bunch, one of several men implicated in the gang rape, was convicted of three counts of rape, three counts of complicity to rape, aggravated robbery, kidnapping, aggravated menacing and multiple firearm specifications. Bunch, who was 16 at the time of the rape, was sentenced to 49 years and his co-defendant, Brandon Moore, to 50 years.

In 2022, Bunch was up for parole early after serving 18 years of their sentence, following a new state law intended to provide opportunities for juvenile offenders to redeem themselves and not spend a lifetime in prison.

Bunch has maintained his innocence since his arrest. He appealed his case all the way to the Supreme Court, which issued the 4-3 ruling in his favor Dec. 29, 2022.

The testimony Tuesday came from multiple experts, including Dr. Margaret Bull Kovera, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and attorney Richard Koblentz. Kovera is an expert in eyewitness identification and Koblentz in ineffective assistance of counsel.

Bunch’s appeal argues that his attorney at the time of his conviction, Dennis DiMartino, failed to call an expert witness to challenge the victim’s identification of Bunch as one of the men responsible.

DiMartino has since had his law license suspended indefinitely for negligence in representing other clients. Defense counsel Joseph Patituce of Akron, noted that DiMartino had been sanctioned by the Ohio Bar Association twice, shortly after representing Bunch, leading up to his suspension in 2016.

Kovera told the court that scientific studies have shown expert testimony can decisively affect a jury’s understanding of the facts presented. She said that without that context, jurors usually fail to consider specific and important details that inform the validity of an eyewitness identification of a suspect. She said the weight jurors afford a witness’s identification usually depends solely upon the witness’s confidence in the identification.

In Bunch’s case, the victim did not identify him as one of her rapists until well after the crime, when she saw his picture in a newspaper article.

In Kovera’s report, which was reviewed by the Supreme Court in its decision, she concluded that there are several factors that suggest the victim’s identification of Bunch was unreliable. She also said there is a high degree of scientific certainty that the verdict in the case would have been different if DiMartino had called an expert witness.

Koblentz discussed his report, which outlined multiple errors he said DiMartino made.

He said that while DiMartino conceded in opening statements that the case was all about the victim’s identification of Bunch, he failed to call an eyewitness identification expert, even though the court had allocated funds for expert testimony. He said the defense also failed to effectively cross examine police witnesses in the case.

Koblentz called it “frankly appalling” that DiMartino did not understand the jury instructions that explain to jurors what Ohio Revised Code says about the weight and validity of eyewitness testimony. He said that understanding informs how an attorney presents their case.

Koblentz said attorneys consult with experts first to understand the subjects they present to the court and jurors and then call the experts as witnesses to inform the jury. Koblentz also noted that a majority of wrongful convictions are the result of mistaken eyewitness identification.

The hearing will resume this morning with the state calling its own expert witness.