The state’s highest court today affirmed a cold-case rape conviction that a lower court vacated last year, ensuring that the defendant will serve out the 15-year prison sentenced imposed after trial, Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said.

The Supreme Judicial Court today overruled the Massachusetts Appeals Court’s decision to vacate RONALD McCOY’s 2006 conviction for rape, kidnapping, and assault and battery. The convictions came after Suffolk prosecutors proved that McCoy had held a woman against her will, beat her, and raped her ten years earlier; when the Appeals Court vacated the conviction, prosecutors sought further appellate review by the high court.

In an 11-page decision authored by Justice Francis X. Spina, the SJC found that the introduction of certain testimony was error under the state’s first complaint doctrine but “the error did not create a substantial risk of miscarriage of justice.”

Under a 2005 SJC decision that provides an exception to the hearsay rule, usually only one witness to the victim’s initial disclosure of sexual assault is permitted to testify at trial about the disclosure.

“Permitting a single first complaint witness to testify will accomplish the primary goal of the doctrine, which is to refute any false inference that silence is evidence of a lack of credibility on the part of the rape complainants,” the court wrote, citing its decision in Commonwealth v. King.

At McCoy’s trial, testimony about the rape victim’s disclosure was heard from the Boston Police officer to whom she first disclosed the attack, the victim’s mother, a Boston Police detective, and a sexual assault nurse examiner.

Noting that defense counsel did not object to any of those witnesses’ testimony at trial, the court wrote, “[N]o substantial risk of a miscarriage of justice was created by the testimony of the detective, the mother, or the SANE nurse. The main issue in this trial was the credibility of the victim, and the defense capitalized on inconsistencies in her testimony during the cross-examination of the detective and the nurse.”

Conley hailed the court’s decision, saying it preserved a just verdict.

“We had confidence that the high court would review the case in its entirety and see that justice had been done,” he said.

Though the victim and defendant had met through a mutual acquaintance prior to the attack, McCoy (D.O.B. 2/9/61) was identified as the rapist through a DNA match. Evidence and testimony introduced at trial proved that he approached the victim, then 26, as she left a friend’s house in Roxbury at about 2:30 a.m. on Feb. 27, 1996.

Under the pretense of giving her a ride home, the evidence showed, McCoy instead drove the victim to a wooded area near Franklin Park. Once there, he turned off the vehicle lights and attempted to rape her; when she resisted, he punched and slapped her several times in the face and head before forcing himself on her.

Immediately following the rape, McCoy opened the passenger’s side door and forced her out of the truck before leaving the scene.

The victim crawled to a nearby street and lay there until a motorist stopped and brought her to the Area B-3 police station. From there, she was transported to Boston City Hospital, where medical personnel completed a rape kit and preserved semen recovered from her body.

Despite the Boston Police investigation that followed, the woman’s assailant remained unidentified. Five years later, however, in 2001, detectives assigned to the Boston Police Sexual Assault Unit submitted the rape kit DNA sample to CODIS, the Combined DNA Index System database.

Investigators later learned that the sample they had submitted matched the DNA profile of McCoy, who had earlier submitted a sample in connection with an unrelated case, and authorities began building the case against him.

Assistant District Attorney Janis Noble of Conley’s Appeals Division argued the case before the SJC. Assistant District Attorney Cory Flashner prosecuted the case at trial. McCoy was represented on appeal by attorney Joseph Mazza.