RIVERHEAD, N.Y. (AP) — A judge on Wednesday said prosecutors can use DNA evidence obtained through advanced techniques in the forthcoming murder trial of Rex Heuermann, the man accused of being Long Island’s Gilgo Beach serial killer.

Judge Timothy Mazzei, in his 29-page ruling, concluded that experts presented by defense lawyers provided no “empirical proof to refute the validated empirical evidence“ presented by prosecutors and their expert witnesses during recent hearings and court filings.

Prosecutors and experts have said it would be the first time advanced DNA analysis has been allowed as evidence in a New York court — and one of just a handful of such instances nationwide. Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney, whose office is prosecuting the case, said the decision marked a “significant step” in forensic DNA analysis.

“We were able to prevail for one simple reason: The science was on our side,” Tierney said after the brief hearing in Riverhead court.

“This is where we are heading in terms of the science,” he continued. “It just mirrors all the other scientific fields that use this evidence. The criminal justice system caught up today.”

Heuermann’s attorney Michael Brown said he was disappointed in Mazzei’s decision and that his legal team has raised new arguments to get the DNA evidence excluded from trial.

In a memo filed Wednesday, they allege DNA evidence developed by Astrea Forensics violates state public health law because the California lab does not hold a required permit from New York’s health department.

“Any analysis performed by Astrea Forensics is unlawful and must be deemed presumptively unreliable,” the defense memo reads. “To hold otherwise would be to ignore and render meaningless the plain unequivocal provisions of the New York State public health law.“

Tierney said prosecutors will respond in writing but that he’s not convinced the defense’s latest argument applies as prosecutors worked with the FBI and followed national standards on DNA testing.

Mazzei said he’ll rule on the defense’s latest motion, as well as their pending request to break up the case into multiple trials, at a hearing on Sept. 23.

No trial date has been set. Heuermann appeared in court Wednesday but didn’t appear to react to the proceedings.

The 61-year-old Manhattan architect, who was arrested more than two years ago, has been charged in the deaths of seven women in a series of killings that prosecutors say stretched back at least to 1993.

Most of the women were sex workers whose remains were discovered along an isolated parkway not far from Gilgo Beach and Heuermann’s home in Massapequa.

Prosecutors say DNA analysis conducted by two separate labs using different testing methods strongly links Heuermann to the killings that haunted the New York City suburbs for years.

Mazzei’s decision pertained only to the analysis conducted by Astrea Forensics, which used whole genome sequencing to analyze highly degraded hair fragments recovered from some of the victims’ remains.

Heuermann’s lawyers argued the lab’s calculations exaggerate the likelihood that the hairs match their client’s DNA. They also complained the statistical analysis Astrea conducted was improperly based on the 1,000 Genomes Project, an open-source database containing the full DNA sequence of some 2,500 people worldwide.

But prosecutors dismissed the critique as “misguided” and a “fundamental misunderstanding” of the lab’s methods. Mazzei, in his ruling, agreed, calling the defense arguments “flawed.”

Whole genome sequencing allow scientists to map out the entire genetic sequence, or genome, of a person using the slimmest of DNA material.

While it is relatively rare in criminal forensics, the technique has been used in a wide range of scientific and medical breakthroughs for years, including the mapping of the Neanderthal genome that earned a Nobel Prize in 2022.

Prosecutors and experts say whole genome sequencing has the potential to allow researchers to generate a DNA profile of a suspect in instances where long accepted DNA techniques fall short, such as when a sample is very old or highly degraded, as is the case with the hair fragments found on the Gilgo Beach victims.

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