STRmix™ Approved for Use in LA, Washington State
WASHINGTON, D.C. (PRWEB) July 26, 2018 -- STRmix™ – the sophisticated forensic software used to resolve mixed DNA profiles previously thought to be too complex to interpret – has been approved for use by Washington State Patrol and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
Washington State Patrol, the state police agency for Washington State, and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, the largest sheriff’s department in the U.S., join 32 other federal, state, and local agencies throughout the nation which are now routinely using STRmix™ to resolve DNA profiles.
Other agencies currently using STRmix™ include the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF). Earlier this year, STRmix™ was approved for use by the City of Columbus (Ohio) Police Department Crime Laboratory and the Harris County Forensic Genetics Laboratory in Houston, Texas.
STRmix™ is also in various stages of installation, validation, and training in 51 other U.S. labs. In addition, 14 laboratories in Australia, England, Scotland, Republic of Ireland, Canada, and New Zealand now use STRmix™.
STRmix™ uses standard, well-established statistical methods to build up a picture of the DNA genotypes that, when added together, best explains an observed mixed DNA profile. STRmix™ then enables users to compare the results against a person or persons of interest and calculate a statistic, or “likelihood ratio,” of the strength of the match.
Since its introduction in 2011, STRmix™ “has been successfully used in numerous U.S. court cases and thousands of cases internationally, while there have been at least 13 successful admissibility hearings in the U.S.,” explains John Buckleton DSc, FRSNZ, Forensic Scientist at the New Zealand Institute of Environmental Science and Research (ESR). Dr. Buckleton developed STRmix™ in collaboration with ESR’s Jo-Anne Bright and Duncan Taylor from Forensic Science South Australia (FSSA).
Most recently, STRmix™ has been used in a Brooklyn, New York case in which a man was convicted of murdering his estranged wife, a Florida Circuit Court case which led to first-degree murder convictions for two defendants in the fatal drive-by shooting of a toddler, and an Indiana robbery case in which police were able to charge a suspect after analyzing the DNA mixture from latex gloves believed to be worn during the crime.
“In the seven years since it was introduced, STRmix™ has moved from being an experimental technology to the broadly accepted norm in cases in which forensic DNA software is required to resolve mixed DNA profiles,” notes Martin Riegel, Chief Executive Officer of STRmix™ Ltd., the newly formed subsidiary of ESR. “I expect use will continue to grow in the future as the software is continually improved and new features and functionality added.”
A new version of STRmix™ is planned for release later this year. STRmix™ v2.5, launched in mid-2017, contained new features designed to improve functionality, speed, memory, and ease of use, including multi-kit functionality and a likelihood ratio (LR) batcher tool.
For more information about STRmix™ visit http://www.esr.cri.nz/ or http://strmix.esr.cri.nz/.
Ray Weiss, Weiss PR, Inc., +1 (443) 451-7144, [email protected]
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