Matthew Nilo, the lawyer accused in a series of Boston rapes from over 15 years ago, was in Suffolk Superior Court Monday for a brief hearing on discovery motions in the case.
The entire hearing was about three minutes long and the matter was continued until March 14.
Nilo, a New Jersey resident, is accused of raping or sexually assaulting eight women between 2007 and 2008, when he was living in Boston’s North End. Nilo has denied all allegations against him.
According to Suffolk District Attorney Kevin Hayden’s office, several of the assaults “followed a similar pattern.”
“The victims were attacked while they were walking alone, in the dark, either at night or early in the morning,” Hayden’s office wrote in a statement last year. Hayden said at the time that DNA evidence played a role in the investigation into Nilo.
Authorities have said they used a combination of new procedures to connect Nilo to the Charlestown rapes. Those cases were among the 100 such cases that Boston police reinvestigated over the past few years through a federal grant to revisit old DNA samples with current improved technology.
The police worked with the FBI on forensic genetic genealogy testing, which involves running a DNA profile against databases for familial matches, rather than only for a direct match.
An attorney representing Nilo previously told The Boston Globe he intends to challenge the constitutionality of such evidence collected by police and prosecutors used to arrest Nilo.
Nilo, who attended Boston Latin School, was brought back to Boston last year from his apartment in New Jersey after a cold case investigation by Boston police and federal authorities connected him to the Charlestown assaults.
Danny McDonald can be reached at daniel.mcdonald@globe.com. Follow him @Danny__McDonald.