Improving stomach content based death time determination by maximum probability estimation

Abstract

Stomach content based death time estimation (SCE), is a well-known technique in forensic sciences. Among more qualitatively oriented approaches the content percentage based method SCE by Tröger, Baur and Spann yields quantitative results and gives stochastic error measures for its outputs. This is possible since the methods estimator, which we call transformed expectation estimator (TEE) as well as the probability distribution of the time between last meal and death are determined numerically, though in SCE the estimator and confidence intervals are presented graphically only.Our articles outcomes are:-Explicit formulae of the TE estimator for SCE and of its probability distribution-Introduction of the maximum probability estimation (MPE) concept as well as of a MP estimator formula for SCE-Evidence that TEE>MPE, that the difference is more than ca.15% of the TEE and the difference can rise up to ca. 1h-Evidence that MPE is more relevant in forensic contexts than TEE