WASHINGTON, DC (5/2/19) – Two California forensic labs – the Orange County Crime Lab (OCCL) and the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) Forensic Science Division – are the latest in the U.S. to announce plans to use STRmix™ to resolve DNA profiles in criminal investigations.
Developed in New Zealand, STRmix™ is sophisticated forensic software that can be used to resolve mixed DNA profiles previously thought to be too complex to interpret.
The addition of the California forensic labs brings the total number of U.S. agencies now using STRmix™ to 46. That list includes federal agencies like the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), state agencies such as those recently added in Massachusetts, South Carolina, and Colorado, and private companies like Bode Cellmark Forensics.
STRmix™ is also in various stages of installation, validation, and training in more than 60 other U.S. labs.
“STRmix™ has greatly improved the usability of DNA,” says John Buckleton DSc, FRSNZ, Forensic Scientist at the New Zealand Institute of Environmental Science and Research (ESR) and one of the developers of STRmix™. “As a result, more and more forensic labs worldwide are turning to STRmix™ to produce usable DNA evidence in a wide range of criminal cases.”
According to Dr. Buckleton, agencies using STRmix™ are reporting an increase of interpretable DNA in gun cases from about 40% to more than 70%. STRmix™ is also proving to be highly effective in sexual assault cases.
“Given the considerable resources invested in both resources and staff time to clear Sexual Assault Kit backlogs, forensic labs are quickly recognizing that STRmix™ is producing a much better return on investment by delivering a significantly higher rate of interpretable results,” notes Dr. Buckleton.
STRmix™ has been used successfully in numerous U.S. court cases, including 28 successful admissibility hearings. Internationally, STRmix™ has been used to interpret DNA evidence in more than 100,000 cases since 2012.
In addition to its widespread use in the U.S., STRmix™ is being used in all nine state and territory labs in Australia and New Zealand, as well as 11 forensic labs in England, Scotland, Ireland, Finland, Dubai, and Canada.
STRmix™ introduced a new version of the software, STRmix™ v2.6, in mid-2018, and recently launched DBLR™, an application for rapidly calculating likelihood ratios. Likelihood ratios are used to assess the strength of DNA evidence and how likely it is that DNA found at a crime scene belongs to specific individuals. Used in conjunction with STRmix™, DBLR™ can calculate millions of likelihood ratios in seconds.
For more information about STRmix™ visit www.strmix.com.
