Houser case awaits trial evidence

YOUNGSTOWN

DNA testing and logs of FBI efforts to enhance a St. Dominic Church security videotape are still awaited in the capital murder case of Jamar Houser, who is charged with robbing and killing Angeline Fimognari outside the church last Jan. 23.

Houser, 19, of Volney Road, is charged with fatally shooting Fimognari, 80, of Sheridan Road, in the church parking lot after she left a Saturday morning Mass.

A DNA sample must be completely consumed during testing at an out-of-state laboratory, and arrangements must be made for a defense expert to witness the testing, explained Rebecca L. Doherty, an assistant Mahoning County prosecutor assigned to the case. However, Doherty declined to discuss the source of the sample being tested.

Defense lawyers John B. Juhasz and Lynn Maro await logs that detail FBI efforts to enhance the church video.

To obtain those logs, Doherty explained after a Monday pre-trial hearing that she must overcome a federal law that keeps the FBI’s electronic enhancement techniques secret.

As for the enhancement attempt, Doherty said: “Nothing actually was even accomplished by doing that. I mean the video is no different. There was just nothing more that they could do with it. It is the way it was.”

“It’s not that it’s necessarily poor quality. It’s just that the camera jumps around, so it’s just not as complete. But they were looking at it. There wasn’t any more they could do,” she said of the FBI examiners. “There’s just no additional information to be had,” from that video, Doherty said.

As part of the pre-trial evidence sharing process, known as discovery, Doherty provided the defense additional police reports and Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation testing reports concerning the case on Monday.

“One of the tests from August is highly favorable, we think, to the defense, because it shows gunshot residue on the person who, we think, was the owner of the jacket that was subject to the testing,” Juhasz said in court.

Doherty declined to comment after court on the matter Juhasz was referring to.

The next pre-trial hearing in the case will be at 10:30 a.m. Feb. 9, with a hearing on admissibility of evidence set for 10 a.m. March 4. The case is before Judge Lou A. D’Apolito of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court. No trial date has yet been set.