Maryland man faces charge in 2004 Green Line sexual attack; initially, just his DNA was indicted

Updated with new information from the DA's office.

An economics consultant from Maryland was arraigned today on charges of indecent assault and battery for an incident on the Green Line near Kenmore Square in 2004, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports.

Prosecutors charge Timothy Day spurted on a woman's pants and pocketbook on a crowded B trolley between Copley and Kenmore Square on June 22, 2004.

Prosecutors initially indicted an unknown individual linked to a specific DNA sequence, extracted from the remains of the material on the woman's purse, retrieved from the trash after she threw it away in disgust.

In 2010, the Supreme Judicial Court ruled DNA sequences were unique enough for indictments, even if the person the sample is from is not yet known. The benefit to prosecutors and police is that an indictment stops the clock on any statute-of-limitations issues.

According to the DA's office:

The victim later told MBTA Transit Police that the man, whose identity was then unknown, was pressing against her from behind. Shortly after he exited at Kenmore station, the woman noticed a wet substance on her shoulder bag, which had been at her feet, and on her pants.

The woman washed her clothes and threw away her shoulder bag. Transit Police recovered the bag from the trash, however, and submitted it to the Boston Police Crime Laboratory. The crime lab, in turn, submitted it to the Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, which maintains millions of DNA samples from known and unknown offenders.

A few months later, the database reported a match with evidence from a similar attack on the Washington, DC transit system in 2002, the DA's office says. Then, in 2011, investigators got a match with Day specifically, after federal officials entered his information into the system, the DA's office reports.

Suffolk Superior Court Clerk Magistrate Gary Wilson set Day's bail at $1,500, the amount requested by prosecutors.

Day, who has a doctorate in economics, was a principal at took a new job at a Washington consulting firm - which today took down all references to him on his Web site, including:

Timothy L. Day has 10 years of experience providing economic, financial, and accounting analyses and expert services in a wide range of matters. His commercial litigation experience includes damages analyses in breach of contract disputes, intellectual property infringement matters, and numerous cases in which business valuation was a central issue. He also focuses on securities fraud, including class certification, materiality and loss causation, and damages. In addition, Dr. Day has several years of experience as a transfer pricing economist at two of the Big-4 accounting firms.

He has taught at the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins.

Earlier:
Man charged with spurting on woman on Red Line.

Innocent, etc.