Data collected from various samples of DNA from the cab, slips of cab vouchers and small money bag during the investigation of the 2014 robbery and shooting of a Billtown Cab Co. driver was the focus of the alleged shooter’s third day of trial in Lycoming County Court Thursday.

The day in court presided over by President Judge Nancy L. Butts matched what Assistant Public Defender Nicole Spring said during opening statements Tuesday.

“This is a case about science more than I’ve ever seen,” Spring said.

Dante J. Washington, 26, faces attempted homicide and other charges for allegedly getting into Eugene Phillips’ cab from 679 Campbell St., asking to be taken to an alley and shooting and robbing him on May 15, 2014.

Even though some of the tangible DNA evidence was seriously degraded by the time Mark W. Perlin was given data from it in 2015, he was able to conduct a thorough report of many variables of the likelihood of the shooter, he said. The report was released on Dec. 1, 2015.

Perlin, CEO and chief scientific officer of Cybergenetics, testified most of the day as an expert witness in DNA evidence interpretation and the likelihood ratio about his findings.

The findings are based on TrueAllele technology that Perlin created. It cannot say who did the shooting, but only the likelihood based on the data the computer sifts through further categorized as caucasian, African-American or hispanic.

For a DNA sample collected on the right rear seat of Phillips’ cab, Washington was 60,000 times more probable than a coincidental match to an unrelated African-American person, Perlin said.

According to the report, the chance of a false positive was one in 918,000 for an African-American person.

“What’s the chance the methodology was wrong based on match statistics and comparison?” Assistant District Attorney Martin Wade asked Perlin.

“If you were to sample 918,000 people, you would see one event where the statistic was higher than the match,” Perlin said.

The right rear door of the inside of the cab was a match that was 48,000 times more probable than a coincidental match to an unrelated African-American person.

According to the statistics and probability, in the entire state of Pennsylvania, maybe one other person would have a result that high, Perlin said answering one of Wade’s questions.

The report also factored in Phillips, the cab driver, implying that they were together that morning.

For the sample collected from the right rear seat, Phillips was 388 quadrillion times more probable than a coincidental match to an unrelated African-American person and over 2 quadrillion more probable a match than a coincidental, unrelated Caucasian.

The match method  doesn’t use patterns, but observes statistical peaks and is more effective than older methods for analyzing DNA samples where there is more than one person mixed in the sample, Perlin said.

Digging to find why the direct testimony was focusing on the findings for African-Americans, William Miele, the chief county public defender, asked Perlin during cross examination whether the shooter’s race or ethnicity could be determined using his method to analyze the data.

“You can’t determine that … but all three categories were in the report,” Perlin said.

Confirming what was previously stated in testimony earlier in the week, Washington owed $150 by May 16, 2014 for not paying child support, Director of Domestic Relations Paulette Clementoni said in her testimony.

“If he failed to pay he would be incarcerated for three months,” she said.

The trial continues today and is scheduled to continue until Tuesday.