Abstract
DNA mixture evidence pertains to cases where several individuals may have contributed
to a biological stain. Statistical methods and software for such problems are available
and a large number of cases can be handled adequately. However, one class of mixture
problems remains untreated in full generality in the literature, namely when the contributors
may be related. Disregarding a plausible close relative of the perpetrator as an alternative
contributor (identical twin is the most extreme case) may lead to overestimating the
evidence against a suspect. Existing methods only accommodate pairwise relationships
such as the case where the suspect and the victim are siblings, for example. In this
paper we consider relationships in full generality, conveniently represented by pedigrees.
In particular, these pedigrees may involve inbreeding, for instance when the parents
of an individual of interest are first cousins. Furthermore our framework handles
situations where the opposing parties in a court case (prosecution and defence) propose
different family relationships. Consequently, our approach combines classical mixture
and kinship problems.
The basic idea of this paper is to formulate the problem in a way that allows for
the exploitation of currently available methods and software designed originally for
linkage applications. We have developed a freely available R package, euroMix based on another package, paramlink, and we illustrate the ideas and methods on real and simulated data.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: February 03, 2014
Accepted:
January 22,
2014
Received in revised form:
January 13,
2014
Received:
June 22,
2013
Identification
Copyright
© 2014 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
