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.     

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.     

Evaluation of the legal risk of a ‘missed’ cancer in two breastscreen services

Variation in opinions of medical experts is a problem for both the legal and medical profession. This is particularly relevant in breast imaging. BreastScreen Queensland and New South Wales have developed a review protocol to assess ‘reasonableness’ of radiological opinions. It is hoped that the protocol will be acceptable to the courts and will result in a fair outcome for all parties involved in a medico-legal dispute.     

Effects of haloperidol and amisulpride on motor and cognitive skill learning in healthy volunteers

Buprenorphine is a mu opioid partial agonist currently used as an analgesic, and being developed for the treatment of opioid dependence. The purpose of this study was to determine the abuse liability of parenteral buprenorphine in volunteers maintained on daily sublingual (SL) buprenorphine (8 mg). In a residential laboratory, eight volunteers underwent pharmacologic challenges two times per week. Medication challenges were 16 h after the daily dose of buprenorphine, and consisted of double-blind IM injections of buprenorphine (4, 8, 16 mg), the prototypic mu opioid agonist hydromorphone (9 and 18 mg), or saline. Assessments consisted of physiologic monitoring, subjects’ self-reports, and a trained observer’s ratings of drug effects, and were collected for 0.5 h before and 2.0 h following injection. Supplemental doses of IM buprenorphine produced opioid agonist-like effects, indicating some abuse potential of parenteral buprenorphine in buprenorphine-maintained patients. There was incomplete cross-tolerance to the effects of hydromorphone, suggesting that higher maintenance doses of buprenorphine may be needed to maximize clinical efficacy. However, there was a lack of graded dose-effects for hydromorphone, suggesting that buprenorphine’s combination of partial agonist effects and high affinity for opioid receptors may limit the magnitude of effects of supplemental full agonists. Finally, participants tolerated cumulative doses of maintenance buprenorphine plus challenge buprenorphine without adverse effects, suggesting higher doses of buprenorphine can be safely administered to opioid dependent patients. Received: 22 February 1996/Final version: 23 August 1996     

Enhancement of cocaine's abuse liability in methadone maintenance patients

The present study was conducted to determine whether methadone maintenance alters the pharmacodynamic effects of single doses of cocaine. Twenty-two current users of IV cocaine who were not seeking treatment for their illicit cocaine use participated while living on a research unit. Eleven were maintained on methadone 50 mg PO daily as treatment for their opioid abuse; 11 were opioid abusers who were not physically dependent on opioids and who provided opioid-free urines throughout the study. Each subject received acute cocaine challenge doses of 0, 12.5, 25, and 50 mg intravenously in random order under double-blind conditions in separate test sessions. Physiologic and subject-rated responses were measured before injection and for 2 h after. In the methadone maintenance group, cocaine challenge sessions occurred 15.5 h after the daily methadone dose. There were significant differences between the methadone-dependent and nondependent groups: 1) baseline differences related to chronic methadone administration and not associated with cocaine administration (lower respiration rates and pupil diameter; higher skin temperature) and 2) differences in response to cocaine administration; cocaine-induced increases in subject ratings of Drug Effect, Rush, Good Effects, Liking, and Desire for Cocaine and in heart rate were greater in the methadone maintenance patients compared to the non-dependent group. These results indicate that the positive subjective effects and some physiological effects of cocaine are enhanced in methadone-maintained individuals, suggesting a pharmacological basis for the high rates of cocaine abuse among methadone maintenance patients.Some of these data were presented at the annual meeting of the Committee on Problems of drug Dependence, Keystone, Colorado, June 1992     

Abuse liability of flunitrazepam among methadone-maintained patients

Abuse liability and acute subjective and psychomotor effects of flunitrazepam were assessed in ten methadone-maintained males with history of benzodiazepine and alcohol use, who voluntarily participated in a double-blind, controlled, cross-over, randomized clinical trial. There were six experimental sessions in which a single oral dose of flunitrazepam 1, 2, and 4 mg; triazolam 0.5 and 0.75 mg; and placebo was given. Evaluations included physiological measures; psychomotor performance tasks (simple reaction time, Digit Symbol Substitution Test, balance task, Maddox-wing device); and self-administered subjective effects questionnaires [Addiction Research Center Inventory (ARCI), Profile of Mood States (POMS), a series of visual analog scales (VAS)]. All drugs but flunitrazepam 1 mg caused an impairment of psychomotor tasks. Effects were more evident with the highest doses of both drugs. Only flunitrazepam 4 mg produced a significant decrease in balance time. Triazolam 0.75 mg induced increases in sedation measured by ARCI-PCAG, depression in POMS, and VAS-drowsiness scores. Flunitrazepam 4 mg caused euphoria-related effects as measured by increases in ARCI-MBG and “high” scores in the VAS. Our findings of flunitrazepam-induced euphoria in methadone-maintained subjects together with epidemiological evidence of flunitrazepam abuse by opioid dependents, suggest that it may be included in the group of benzodiazepines with a relatively high abuse potential. Received: 13 February 1998/Final version: 1 May 1998     

Stage of palate closure as one indication of “liability” to cleft palate

A new inbred mouse strain, SW/Fr, developed from a random-bred SW stock has a 6% incidence of spontaneous cleft palate without cleft lip. SW/Fr mice close their palates comparatively late in development. After cortisone treatment, the mean of the distribution (mean time to reach palate stage 5) is shifted towards later gestational ages. There is no change in the variance of the distribution. These data lend further support to the hypothesis that cleft palate in mice may fit a model where a continuous distribution is separated into discontinuous parts by a developmental threshold, and that time of palate closure is an important component of liability to cleft palate.     

Genetic Analysis Workshop II: pedigree analysis of a binary trait without assuming an underlying liability

A model for concordance in a binary measure that does not rely on the assumption of an underlying latent liability dichotomized about a threshold has been demonstrated for twin pairs [Hannah et al, 1983]. It is extended here to pedigrees of arbitrary structure by making an assumption that is, for small incidence rates, almost equivalent to postulating that relative risks are multiplicative. The model is applied to the workshop data to determine the extent to which the known structure of the simulated models can be recovered.