A Butler County Common Pleas Court judge has denied a post-conviction relief petition from a former Middlesex Township man serving a lengthy prison sentence for being convicted of sexually assaulting a Cranberry Township woman in 2002.

Ralph Skundrich, 59, who is serving 31 years and 10 months to 63 years and eight months in State Correctional Institution Houtzdale, claimed in his petition the attorney who represented him in his 2014 trial was ineffective.

Cranberry Township police charged Skundrich with burglary, rape, terroristic threats, indecent assault and two counts of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse for entering a township woman’s home on June 6, 2002, and sexually assaulting her several times under the threat of killing her sleeping 11-year-old daughter. He wore a mask and told the woman he had a knife, according to testimony and court documents.

In an 11-page opinion and order issued Oct. 9, Judge Maura Palumbi said Skundrich failed to rebut the presumption his trial lawyer’s performance was within the wide range of reasonable and effective professional assistance and failed to provide enough evidence to prove his conviction or sentence resulted from ineffective assistance of counsel.

Skundrich was identified as a suspect in this case and another 2002 sexual assault case in Pittsburgh after a DNA match was made from a national database. He was convicted in the Pittsburgh case. His post-conviction relief petition in that case remains pending in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court.

At a hearing on his Butler County relief petition held on two separate days this spring, Skundrich’s current attorney, Kenneth Haber, contended the TrueAllele probabilistic genotyping software used to match DNA evidence to Skundrich has not gone through verification and validation processes to ensure its accuracy.

Through a witness, he contended the source code used to create the software should be turned over for accuracy testing. The software was used because a report from the state crime lab found the DNA tests inconclusive.

Haber argued Skundrich’s trial lawyer, Jose Hernandez-Cuebas, did not do enough to challenge or dispute TrueAllele evidence.

Assistant district attorney Andrew Calve called Jennifer Bracamontes, a case worker at Cybergenetics, which created the software, as a witness. She said the software has been used by prosecutors and defense attorneys for many years. It was used to identify victims of 9/11.

Source codes are not relevant in validation or verification testing genotyping software, Bracamontes said. Instead, data from known DNA is run through the program and the results are checked to see if they accurately match the data, she said.

Palumbi’s opinion states Hernandez-Cuebas had a reasonable basis for not obtaining an expert witness to challenge the TrueAllele evidence and he instead focused his defense on the lack of physical evidence and the inconclusive crime lab results. She said Hernandez-Cuebas believed technical testimony about the software and source code would have been convoluted and would have bored the jury.

Skundrich has 30 days to appeal the order. Haber could not be reached for comment Thursday.

In the Pittsburgh-area case in which Skundrich is also seeking post-conviction relief, a jury convicted him on charges filed by Pittsburgh police for sexually assaulting an 18-year-old college student in her Shadyside apartment in 2002. Police said he threatened her with a gun, demanded money and forced her to have sex while he was wearing a mask.

A jury convicted him of all 13 charges in January 2014. He was sentenced in April of that year to 65½ to 131 years. That relief petition is pending in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court.