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Ethical Issues In Criminal Investigation

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According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), there were a total of 14,827 reported murders in the USA (FBI.) The first thing that investigators look at when they arrive at the crime site is DNA evidence from the criminal. Once the DNA evidence is collected they will attempt to create a DNA profile to match the assailant to one of the suspects. Although this procedure may seem perfect, when put into action, there are often several issues. One of the biggest issues is the fact that the DNA sample collected from the scene is incomplete. Often only partial samples are collected and it leaves room for doubt during the prosecution. In addition, during laboratory analysis of the DNA sample, the use of different machines and the amount of …show more content…
John Yelenic in Blairsville, Pennsylvania in 2006. Even though a minor section of the DNA mixture found at the murder scene tied suspect Kevin Foley to the murder, a forensic expert said there was a 1 in 13,000 chance that the DNA was from someone else. The defense lawyer explained how the data collected is inaccurate due to environmental factors that may have altered the sample. As a result of this, Foley was not charged with the crime (Perlin.) To solve this issue, TrueAllele Technology was developed by Cybergenetics. TrueAllele Software allows for faster, more accurate statistical analysis of DNA samples by incorporating MATLAB, Signal Processing Toolbox, and Statistics Toolbox. This in return allows investigators to find the right murder without any bias opinion by considering the environmental effects that could of affected the sample during …show more content…
Before TrueAllele Software could analyze the data, it must be collected through fluorescence detection. The DNA is collected from the scene is amplified and copied multiple times in a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) machine. This step is preformed because the small sample collected is often not enough to make quantitative measurements with. Then the DNA is cut into fragments on different allele sites by restriction enzymes and separated by electrophoresis. The fragments obtained are tagged with a florescence protein. Laser light is used to excite the proteins causing them to give off brightness. The brighter the light given off by the proteins the more DNA there is in the sample. There are many programs that can collect this data ("Forensic Sciences.".) Next the data is inputted into the TrueAllele Software. The program will then interpret the data using a probability model. There are many variables and sub variables involved in these models. Some variables are genotype, mixture weight, PCR-shutter (changes done to the data because of PCR machine), and variance parameter (How TrueAllele® Works (Part 1).) The program will solve this model using Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) statistical sampling to see which one (or groups) of these variables caused a variation in the data. This is done through Metropolis-Hastings algorithm developed with Statistics Toolbox (Perlin.) What this algorithm does is

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