Impact of allelic dropout on evidential value of forensic DNA profiles using RMNE

Abstract

Motivation: Two methods are commonly used to report on evidence carried by forensic DNA profiles: the 'Random Man Not Excluded' (RMNE) approach and the likelihood ratio (LR) approach. It is often claimed a major advantage of the LR method that dropout can be assessed probabilistically. Results: In this article, a new RMNE measure is proposed that like-wise accounts for allelic dropout in an observed forensic DNA profile. We discuss the necessary calculations, underline their simplicity and provide a tool for performing the calculations. © 2008 The Author(s).