  When the expert has been called upon to give an opinion upon the genuineness of writings he embodies his conclusions in a report of which the following may be taken as a fair example:— To the Chief of Police. Sir, REX versus JONES. In accordance with your instructions dated —— I beg leave to inform you that I have made a careful examination of the document marked A, and attached hereto, and compared it with the documents marked B, C, D, E and F, also attached. I have arrived at the conclusion that the document A was written by the same hand as produced B, C, D, E and F. The main reasons which have led me to form this opinion are these:— First, although the writing in A bears at first sight no resemblance to that of the other documents, the difference is only such as experience leads me to expect in a writing which has been purposely disguised, as I believe this has been. The writing on the five documents B to F I take to be the normal hand of the author, and that on A to be the same writer's hand altered so as to present a different appearance. I will call the specimens B to F the genuine examples, and A the disguised. Experience shows that the person who writes an anonymous letter generally seeks to disguise his hand by departing as much as he deems possible from his normal writing. The usual hand of the writer of the genuine The writing in the genuine letters contains fourteen very distinctive peculiarities, or tricks of hand, which I find repeated in the anonymous letter A. (Here describe them, as for example.) 1. The figure 4 in the dates is always made like the print form of that figure. 2. The small e is always of the Greek form. 3. The small t is always crossed by a bar thick at the beginning, tapering to a point, with its longest part behind the shank of the t [and so on]. The various points of resemblance are set out in detail, a separate paragraph for each, and each paragraph numbered. It is extremely important that a report should be fully descriptive and written in plain, non-technical language, easily understood by the jury, who will have to decide whether the resemblance has been made out. Too many handwriting experts spoil the effect of their evidence by employing technical language and presuming on the part of the jury an acquaintance with the methods of comparing handwritings. Do not be satisfied by saying that certain letters resemble each other. Show by an enlarged diagram how and where, indicating the parts to which attention is called by arrows. Place the single letters to be compared in parallel columns, headed with the alphabetical letter distinguishing the document in which the particular letter occurs. Use foolscap paper, and write on one side of the paper only. The usual method of dealing with the handwriting expert in the witness-box is shown in the following extract from a report of an actual case. Mr. D. B—— was called by counsel for the prosecution and duly sworn. Q.—You have had considerable experience in examining handwriting. A.—Over twenty years. Q.—Look at these documents. (Hands documents to witness.) Have you seen and examined these? A.—I have. Q.—Have you formed any opinion upon them? A.—I have, and have prepared a report. In some cases the expert is allowed to read his report in full. In others he is requested to give a verbal report, but if the point be insisted upon, the judge generally permits the report to be read, either by the expert or by counsel. A copy of the report, together with the documents in dispute are then usually handed to the jury for examination. The expert may proceed to illustrate his point with the aid of a blackboard and chalk, but much depends upon the attitude taken by the judge and counsel. Some judges insist that the expert shall confine himself to expressing his opinion, leaving counsel to deal with the explanation and comparison; others give the expert every opportunity of showing how he has arrived at his opinions. The examination in chief is usually a very simple matter. The trouble for the expert begins when counsel for the other side gets up to cross-examine. In nearly every case the object of the cross-examining counsel is to ridicule the art and get the expert to admit the possibility of other writers possessing the same peculiarities which are said to distinguish the letters before the Court. Counsel's favourite trick is to select some letter and ask the expert if he is prepared to swear that he has never seen something just like it in some other person's writing. The expert who knows his business will insist on keeping well to the front the bedrock basis of handwriting comparison, which is the application of the law of probability to cumulative evidence. It is not a question whether some other person may be in the habit of making a t or a k similar to those cited as evidences of common origin, but whether it is probable that two persons should make a dozen or more letters in In the course of his replies the expert may justifiably help his own case by repeating, when opportunity occurs, such irrefutable axioms as, No writer can say off-hand what peculiarities he may exhibit; that there are scores of ways of dotting an i, or crossing a t, and that few persons know which form they mostly affect. Fifty such points may be gathered from this little volume alone, while acquaintance with the works of other writers on caligraphy will supply ample ammunition for meeting and repelling the customary form of attack on the handwriting expert. Another method of discrediting a witness is to remind him that experts have differed, the Dreyfus case being usually cited. The answer is obvious. First it is essential to be assured that those experts were all competent, for there are degrees of competency in judging handwriting as in every other subject on which opinion may be called. It is a notorious fact that in the Dreyfus case the most competent experts testified that the Henry letters were forgeries, the authorities called on the other side being in most cases unknown men or amateurs of no standing. A number of these self-styled experts possessed no other qualification than presumed familiarity with the handwriting of Dreyfus. It is also worthy of note that several of the experts on both sides proved most inefficient witnesses, obscuring their explanations by the employment of technical phraseology which conveyed little meaning to the lay mind. Exactitude and regularity in the choice of the words used in describing the parts of letters should be strictly observed by the student. The rules given in the chapter on "Terminology" should be mastered and adhered to. In most cases the terms there applied to letter-analysis will be found to be self-explanatory. |
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