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18-March-2016
Allegheny County public defenders withdraw TrueAllele source code appeal in Wolfe sisters double homicide
Pittsburgh, PA
Allegheny County public defenders representing Allen Wade withdrew their Superior Court appeal for Cybergenetics TrueAllele® source code. Wade is accused of killing sisters Susan and Sarah Wolfe in 2014 in their East Liberty home. TrueAllele DNA match statistics have linked Wade to the murders.
Cybergenetics analyzed several items of DNA evidence at the request of Allegheny County prosecutors. Crime laboratories are often unable to interpret mixed DNA containing two or more people. TrueAllele is a mathematical computing method that objectively separates mixture data, and calculates reliable DNA match statistics.
Cybergenetics has transparently published the basic TrueAllele mathematics, and makes the executable program available to defendants for testing at no charge. There have been over thirty validation studies establishing TrueAllele's reliability, seven of them published in peer-reviewed journals. Source code is human-readable text developed by programmers, not the executable version needed for testing software. Most companies, including Cybergenetics, protect source code as a trade secret.
Links
- Defense attorneys drop effort to examine program linking Wade DNA to East Liberty homicides - Newspaper
- Double-homicide trial could be delayed over DNA source code - appeal
- TrueAllele publications and validation articles - Publications