Courtroom Testimony for Probabilistic Genotyping
“Ladies and Gentleman of the Jury, Jane Doe’s DNA matches the DNA found on the handle of the knife; therefore, she touched the knife and used it to stab John Doe”. As much as prosecutors would like that statement to come out of our mouths, that is not the role of the DNA Analyst. We […]
This Week in Forensic Science
No one has hours to scour the papers to keep up with the latest news, so we’ve curated the top news stories in the field of Forensic Science for this week. Here’s what you need to know to get out the door! Silent Witnesses: Why Do Females Make Up Most of Those Investigating Crime […]
Improved Y-STR Typing for Disaster Victim Identification, Missing Persons Investigations, and Historical Human Skeletal Remains
Unidentified human remains often are associated with tragic events, such as fires, terrorist attacks, natural disasters, war conflicts, genocide, airline crashes, homicide, and human rights violations under oppressive totalitarian regimes. In these scenarios, bone may be the most viable sample type for DNA testing. Additionally, skeletal remains often are the only samples available in historical […]
This Week in Forensic Science
No one has hours to scour the papers to keep up with the latest news, so we’ve curated the top news stories in the field of Forensic Science for this week. Here’s what you need to know to get out the door! Killer Sees DNA Composite Sketch and Interrupts Church Service to Confess (Crime […]
Simulating Families from STR Data Derived from Files Exported from CODIS
During the course of initially validating a familial searching method, it was determined that sampling a sufficient number of genuine family sets would be a time consuming and cost prohibitive task. To overcome these challenges, a simulation approach was pursued to gather the familial data required to conduct the study. The immediate benefits of using […]
Identifying a Legend vs A Legendary Fail – Interesting Cases from ISHI
Each year, nearly one thousand people attend the International Symposium on Human Identification. Their titles vary from criminalists and analysts to research and sales professionals to those in the legal profession, and the reasons they attend differ as well, but there seems to be one thing that they all have in common. After the conference, […]
Can the Rapidly Mutating Loci in the Yfiler Plus® Amplification Kit Differentiate the Members of a Large Family?
There are some forensic cases where Y STRs are the only useful evidence. For example, if a female victim scratches her male attacker as she struggles with him, she may pick up some male DNA under her fingernails, but it would be expected that there will be a large amount of her own female DNA […]
This Week in Forensic Science
No one has hours to scour the papers to keep up with the latest news, so we’ve curated the top news stories in the field of Forensic Science for this week. Here’s what you need to know to get out the door! Postmortem Intervals for Skeletal Remains: DOJ-Funded Research Seeks Quantitative Method for Precise […]
Evaluating the Statistical Power of DNA-Based Identification Exemplified by the ‘Missing Grandchildren of Argentina’
The missing grandchildren of Argentina are a well-known collection of missing person cases. From 1976 to 1983, Argentina suffered a military civic dictatorship. It is estimated that 30,000 people were kidnapped, sent to clandestine centers, tortured and murdered. Most of them are still missing. Many women were pregnant at the time of abduction. Rapes were […]
