Correcting forensic DNA errors

DNA mixture interpretation can produce opposing conclusions by qualified forensic analysts, even within the same laboratory. The long-delayed publication of the National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST) study of 109 North American crime laboratories in this journal demonstrates this most clearly. This latest study supports earlier work that shows common methods such as the Combined Probability of Inclusion (CPI) have wrongly included innocent people as contributors to DNA mixtures. The 2016 President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology report concluded, “In summary, the interpretation of complex DNA mixtures with the CPI statistic has been an inadequately specified—and thus inappropriately subjective—method. As such, the method is clearly not foundationally valid” [7]. The adoption of probabilistic genotyping by many laboratories will certainly prevent some of these errors from occurring in the future, but the same laboratories that produced past errors can also now review old cases with their new software—without additional bench work. It is critical that laboratories adopt procedures and policies to do this.     

L’expert judiciaire et l’irresponsabilité pénale. Débats et controverses au cours du temps et questions contemporaines

IntroductionSince the creation of the Société Médico-Psychologique, an accumulation of discussions at the national level has resulted in legislative changes, which concern people with mental disorders. Public opinion has now become a stakeholder, prompting us, as judicial experts, to address criminal irresponsibility. The authors wish to give an account of the evolution of the ideas and professional practices in alienism and forensic psychiatry regarding criminal liability, irresponsibility, and the evolution of legislative measures in this realm.MethodsTo do so, they rely on the use of their forensic psychiatric and medico-psychological expertise, which has been effective for many years and remains relevant today, as well as on their clinical and theoretical research activities. The methodology is based on the analysis of language and the critical approach of historical and clinical epistemology.Forensic IssuesThey are examined taking into account the cultural and scientific context from the middle of the 19th century to the beginning of the 21st century. Criminal responsibility and irresponsibility are ancient principles codified in Roman law by Marcus Aurelius and which evolved with the political, social and religious conjunctions of each epoch. Whether the reason given for the recognition of criminal irresponsibility is referred to as madness, degeneration, insanity, dementia, psychic abnormality or discernment, it has always been the subject of research by physicians, alienists, and then psychiatrists. The authors analyze the role of the dissemination of the debates from the creation of the Annales Médico-Psychologiques (in 1843) and of the Société Médico-Psychologique (in 1852), illustrating them with some famous cases in specialized literature. The importance of forensic discussions at the Société Médico-Psychologique animated the end of the nineteenth century and the first part of the twentieth century, contributing to the enrichment of psychiatric semiology and to the opening up of new research, notably methodological. This will lead to an evolution of the conceptions relative to what induces the criminal act and will no longer limit irresponsibility to a diagnosis of insanity or dementia ; the study of psychic functioning will be put forward with the notion of discernment and those of self-control of one's actions. If numerous theoretical debates within the profession have fueled “expert disputes” sometimes disqualifying the role of experts, they remained, however, in the medical and judicial field. Over the past decade, these issues have been broadened to include societal debates around issues related to dangerousness and recidivism. This has become a dominant theme in scientific gatherings, before the eruption into the criminal field, of the increasing role played by victims and victims’ associations. Law No. 92-683 of 22 July 1992 introduced into the Penal Code Article 122-1 (1994 Penal Code) replacing Article 64, by inserting the notions of alteration or abolition of discernment. This distinction has given rise to new difficulties and tensions in expert practice ; the law came into force in 1994. During the 2000s, a series of high-profile homicides involving people with serious mental disorders, sometimes carried out in a recidivist situation, hit the headlines in France. This resulted in a shift in public opinion that led to the law of 25 February 2008 on criminal irresponsibility. The law put an end to the judicial dismissal of cases on the grounds of criminal irresponsibility, by introducing other provisions in the form of security measures (judicial supervision and detention of security). This law creates new interferences between legal procedural issues and psychiatric practice ; it also emphasized the importance of the role of experts by creating new missions, including the expertise of dangerousness. The movement linked to the consideration of the place of victims has been accentuated, both by the objective of obtaining a judgment for the perpetrator of the acts, and by the solicitation of their participation in the successive phases of the procedure. We have recently moved on to questions and controversies about the lack of accountability leading to the law of 24 January 2022. The current article 122 did not specify the origin of the psychic disorder causing the abrogation of discernment, which was interpreted by the Minister of Justice as “a legal void”, which must be “filled with urgency”. Title I states: “Provisions limiting criminal irresponsibility in cases of mental disorder resulting from self-induced psychoactive substances”. All these new provisions, as well as the creation of new incriminations and qualifications, certainly engender debates between magistrates and experts, but they are above all part of a concern of the public authorities about the necessity of setting up “provisions limiting criminal liability in the case of mental disorder”. The interpretation of the contribution of the law to a criminal act remains complex, according to the authors, in terms of psychopathological and etiopathogenic research. Within the context of expert practice, this new law will make it necessary to add new questions for the current missions, and it can only result in an increase in the complexity of these missions and in a risk of confusion in the answers.ConclusionThe authors show that the question of criminal liability does not solicit the same questions and problems in the judicial field (the point of view of the forensic psychiatrist, during the expert examination) or in the societal field with the confrontation with all the representations that are attached both to madness and to the passage to the criminal act, which since the beginning of the twentieth century involves other emerging disciplines. From their point of view, the assertion that a psychic disorder can be of such severity so as to affect the free will and discernment of the perpetrator of a criminal act at the time of the offence, must remain within the domain of psychiatry, even if the new law of 24 January 2022, through several of its provisions, would attempt to eliminate this necessity.     

Maximizing intelligence obtained from higher-order DNA mixtures from volume crime samples

ABSTRACT

This work collates data from the analysis of complex mixtures analysed in STRmix during routine no-suspect volume crime work. It interrogates the upload rate for these types of mixtures and which component of the profile has been able to be interpreted for upload. The number of profiles giving multiple uploads and the amount of replicate PCR analysis has been collated.     

Abolition du discernement : état des lieux des pratiques des experts psychiatres dans l’ouest de la France

ObjectivesThe goal of this study was to determine the characteristics of subjects considered to be criminally irresponsible due to abolition of judgment pursuant to article 122-1, 41 of the French Penal Code.Materials and methodsThis retrospective study gathered every forensic assessment in 2016 that concluded in criminal irresponsibility from eight forensic psychiatrists practicing in the west of France. We proceeded to study the frequency of abolitions, the socio-demographic characteristics of the subjects, the psychiatric pathologies as defined by the DSM-5, the crimes committed, the clinical justifications and the conclusions of the forensic psychiatrist concerning the potential forced hospitalisation of the subject, the psychiatric dangerousness, curability and the ability to readapt of the subject.ResultsThirty-eight assessments out of the 763 collected concluded in abolition of judgment, a frequency of 4.98%. The subjects suffered from a schizophrenia spectrum disorder or a paranoid delusional disorder (85.2%). The most present clinical elements were paranoid delusions of persecution (23.1%), from intuitive, interpretative, hallucinatory or mental automatism mechanisms (39.7%) and dissociative syndrome (10.7%). Subjects with abolished judgment weren’t always considered dangerous (for 34.3% of individuals) even if a schizophrenia diagnosis was correlated (f = 0.03). Forced hospitalisation was proposed in 50% of assessments and associated with the conclusion of dangerousness (f = 0.01).ConclusionsSchizophrenia spectrum disorders or paranoid delusional disorders are the most common pathologies in forensic psychiatric assessments concluding in abolition of judgment.     

Dangerosité psychiatrique et responsabilité pénale atténuée : à propos de la condamnation à la réclusion à perpétuité d’un schizophrène auteur d’un homicide sexuel sadique

The second paragraph of article 122-1 of the French Criminal Code provides for a reduced penalty in criminal matters (Court of Assizes) when the offender is suffering at the time the act is committed from a mental disorder that reduces his liability. This legal provision is not always respected, as shown by the sentencing to life imprisonment of a chronic psychotic patient who committed a sexual homicide (sadistic rape). The Court of Assizes found that the great dangerousness of this schizophrenic, with a multiple criminal record and who had refused his treatment, justified his conviction, while the psychiatric expertise concluded that he should benefit from a reduction on his criminal liability. The sentence was passed without the level of severity of his mental state having been verified by a new expert. The author therefore questions the “ethical” nature of this court decision which, albeit legal, is contrary to the spirit of the law. There was no appeal against the sentence.     

Du parricide rêvé à l’infanticide réel,ou l’expertise mentale dans tous ses états

The authors describe at length the case of a 33-year-old woman who shot and killed her 9-year-old daughter and attempted suicide immediately afterwards. The judicial inquiry revealed that this infanticidal mother originally intended to kill her own father, who she accused of having sexually abused her in her own childhood and now her daughter, but that unforeseen circumstances changed the mode of operation. She was the subject of seven more or less contradictory psychiatric experts opinions over a period of more than three years before finally being found criminally irresponsible by the court of assizes. She was suffering from delusional psychotic mental disorders at the time of the homicide-suicide. The authors discuss and criticize the conclusions of the experts opinions and instead recommend a multidisciplinary criminological analysis that takes all the objective ans subjective aspects on the case into account.     

Can the Government Ban Organ Sale? Recent Court Challenges and the Future of US Law on Selling Human Organs and Other Tissue

On December 1, 2011, in Flynn v. Holder, a panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld the National Organ Transplant Act of 1984 (NOTA) from a constitutional challenge, but interpreted the act such that its prohibition on sale did not encompass “peripheral blood stem cells” obtained through apheresis. Rehearing of the case was denied on March 27, 2012. The Obama administration must now decide whether to pursue its challenge in the US Supreme Court. This article explains the litigation, its significance and uses it as a backdrop against which to understand the history and future trajectory of the laws governing selling organs and other human tissue.     

Trends in Illicit Drug use in the United States: Conflicting Results from National Surveys

Data from several national studies lead to divergent conclusions regarding trends in illicit drug use in the United States. Two major population studies point to a downturn in drug use dating to the late 1970s. However, a study of drug-related deaths and hospital emergency room visits shows increases in these events in recent years. Studies also show drug use, especially cocaine, continuing to increase among criminals. Additionally, drugs were identified as the most important problem facing the nation in a Gallup poll conducted during the summer of 1989. This paper offers some possible explanations for the divergent trends. Most notably, we suggest that methodological differences in the studies being compared, and lags between trends in the general population and certain subgroups, account for most of the variation in the trend estimates. The paper concludes that illicit drug use is decreasing in the United States.     

Association of low-activity MAOA allelic variants with violent crime in incarcerated offenders

The main enzyme for serotonin degradation, monoamine oxidase (MAO) A, has recently emerged as a key biological factor in the predisposition to impulsive aggression. Male carriers of low-activity variants of the main functional polymorphism of the MAOA gene (MAOA-uVNTR) have been shown to exhibit a greater proclivity to engage in violent acts. Thus, we hypothesized that low-activity MAOA-uVNTR alleles may be associated with a higher risk for criminal violence among male offenders. To test this possibility, we analyzed the MAOA-uVNTR variants of violent (n = 49) and non-violent (n = 40) male Caucasian and African-American convicts in a correctional facility. All participants were also tested with the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ), Barratt Impulsivity Scale (BIS-11) and Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire (BPAQ) to assess their levels of childhood trauma exposure, impulsivity and aggression, respectively. Our results revealed a robust (P < 0.0001) association between low-activity MAOA-uVNTR alleles and violent crime. This association was replicated in the group of Caucasian violent offenders (P < 0.01), but reached only a marginal trend (P = 0.08) in their African American counterparts. While violent crime charges were not associated with CTQ, BIS-11 and BPAQ scores, carriers of low-activity alleles exhibited a mild, yet significant (P < 0.05) increase in BIS-11 total and attentional-impulsiveness scores. In summary, these findings support the role of MAOA gene as a prominent genetic determinant for criminal violence. Further studies are required to confirm these results in larger samples of inmates and evaluate potential interactions between MAOA alleles and environmental vulnerability factors.