Bayesian Networks for Evaluation of Evidence from Forensic Entomology

Abstract

In the aftermath of a CBRN incident, there is an urgent need to reconstruct events in order to bring the perpetrators to court and to take preventive actions for the future. The challenge is to discriminate, based on available information, between alternative scenarios. Forensic interpretation is used to evaluate to what extent results from the forensic investigation favor the prosecutors' or the defendants' arguments, using the framework of Bayesian hypothesis testing. Recently, several new scientific disciplines have been used in a forensic context. In the AniBioThreat project, the framework was applied to veterinary forensic pathology, tracing of pathogenic microorganisms, and forensic entomology. Forensic entomology is an important tool for estimating the postmortem interval in, for example, homicide investigations as a complement to more traditional methods. In this article we demonstrate the applicability of the Bayesian framework for evaluating entomological evidence in a forensic investigation through the analysis of a hypothetical scenario involving suspect movement of carcasses from a clandestine laboratory. Probabilities of different findings under the alternative hypotheses were estimated using a combination of statistical analysis of data, expert knowledge, and simulation, and entomological findings are used to update the beliefs about the prosecutors' and defendants' hypotheses and to calculate the value of evidence. The Bayesian framework proved useful for evaluating complex hypotheses using findings from several insect species, accounting for uncertainty about development rate, temperature, and precolonization. The applicability of the forensic statistic approach to evaluating forensic results from a CBRN incident is discussed.

Providing a Forensic Expert Opinion on the “Degree of Force”: Evidentiary Considerations

“…Many textbooks and journal articles provide introductions to Bayes’ theorem, and explain why its use is the logically correct way to interpret and present forensic evidence [ 34 , 36 , 37 , 38 ]. Bayes’ theorem has been applied in a range of forensic disciplines including pathology [ 39 , 40 ], anthropology [ 41 , 42 ], entomology [ 43 ], biometrics [ 44 ], and biomechanics [ 45 ], and to address different questions such as time since death [ 46 ], manner of death [ 47 ], and identification [ 48 , 49 ], including disaster victim identification [ 50 , 51 , 52 ] and missing persons investigations [ 53 ]. To date, however, Bayes’ theorem has not yet been applied to address the issues associated with opinions on the ‘degree of force’.…”

Post-mortem toxicology: A pilot study to evaluate the use of a Bayesian network to assess the likelihood of fatality

“…Its use has been seen to be gathering momentum over the past few years [28][29][30][31] in for example DNA profiling 32 , individualisation 33 , bioforensics 34 and forensic entomology 35 . This approach has also been applied to the forensic autopsy 36 which, whilst limited to prediction of cause of death from war victims, does illustrate the potential for an expert system to be used as a viable probabilistic tool for cases if appropriate information pertaining to the case was added to the system.…”