Part 4 (2/2)
An expert cannot give an opinion as to the genuineness of a signature based upon a comparison thereof with signatures not before the court.
The standard of comparison used by the expert must be produced in court. Photographic copies are admissible when accompanied by the originals. When original writings are in evidence and the genuineness thereof disputed, magnified photographic copies of the writing and of admitted genuine writings are admissible in evidence, for comparison by jury or expert when accompanied by competent preliminary proof that the copies are accurate in all respects except as to size and color.
The services of the expert are required in a wide range of civil and criminal cases. Where handwriting is questioned on notes, checks, drafts, receipts, wills, deeds, mortgages, bonds, anonymous letters, money orders, registered letter receipts, letters, pension papers, and in smuggling, and in short, on any kind of doc.u.ment where it becomes necessary to establish the ident.i.ty of the writer, the expert is called in. Life, liberty, honor, and property are frequently balanced on a pen point--a few marks of the pen being the determining feature of many a case.
The handwriting of the schoolboy and schoolgirl, though crude, is conventional and idealized. It has but few characteristics so long as the school model or copy-book hand is the goal. The pupil gives constant attention to the handwriting as well as to the thought. A number of students of about the same grade, under the same teacher, will write much alike. Fifteen or twenty of these students could each write a line on a page and it might baffle a layman, and perhaps puzzle an expert, to tell whether or not more than one person wrote the page. This constant striving after one ideal, and putting thought on the handwriting, had drawn them all toward that ideal and away from individuality.
The employment of professional handwriting experts as witnesses in court cases that often involve enormous sums of money, or the liberty or even the lives of suspected malefactors, has awakened widespread interest in the methods of this cla.s.s of experts, their resources and capabilities in conserving the ends of justice.
Many uninformed people appear to look on the handwriting expert as one who, by intuition or the possession of some mysterious occult power, is enabled to distinguish at a glance the true and the spurious in any questioned handwriting. Nothing could be further from the fact.
The secret of his power--as in any other line of scientific research--lies wholly in his intimate familiarity with the innumerable physical details which comprise the written line or word or letter--sometimes so slight a matter as the dotting of an _i_ or the placing of a comma. It is precisely the same specialized sense, born of acute observation and minute scrutiny that enables an expert chemist to take two powders of like weight and color, identical in appearance to the common eye and perhaps in taste to the common palate, and say: This drug is harmless, wholesome; that is a deadly poison--and to specify not only their various individual const.i.tuents but the exact proportion of each. The trained eye of the handwriting expert (as in another case could that of the expert chemist) can often detect at a glance certain distinguis.h.i.+ng earmarks of submitted writing that enable him to fix the ident.i.ty of the writer almost off-hand. In the the great majority of cases, however, the cunning of the forger calls for deliberate, painstaking study and investigation before the conscientious expert is willing to announce with absolute surety an opinion so often fraught with tremendous possibilities for good or for evil.
Nothing else that a person does is so characteristic as the handwriting, and the identification of the individual can be established by it better than by portraits or almost any other means.
As lawyers and laymen and courts are finding this out, the handwriting expert is more and more called upon to untangle snarled questions and to right wrongs.
It is only when attention is directed to this interesting science by the wide publicity given to some great case in which handwriting plays an important part that the notice of the general public is drawn to it. The average person would be surprised to know of the great number of cases that find their way to the office of the handwriting expert.
The man who has made a success in this line is constantly in demand, and makes frequent trips to distant points to appear as witness in courts.
Though nearly every large town has some one who devotes some attention to handwriting, there are but five or six men in this country who give to it practically all of their time, and who have gone very deeply into the subject.
To allow any person to qualify as an ”expert” and to testify as such is a matter wholly within the discretion of the court. Unfortunately, courts frequently are lax in determining this question. Almost any one who can write is permitted to give alleged ”expert” testimony regarding handwriting. In one well-known case, a case, too, involving life and death--the court unwittingly accepted the ”expert” testimony of a witness who, it was afterward proven, was unable to write even so much as his own name. In the litigation attending the disposal of large mining interests held at b.u.t.te, Montana, the court permitted testimony in regard to the handwriting of the testator from a witness who admitted that he had seen the testator write but once, and that in lead pencil over twenty years before.
Any one accustomed to writing is usually allowed to qualify as an ”expert.” To the lay mind it is natural to confound experts who have studied the subject deeply in all its various phases with those who have had occasion to examine it casually, or who may possess uncommon facility with the pen without ever having had occasion to investigate scientifically just those little illusive points upon which the professional expert places his reliance.
Hence, when we read of ”experts” being mistaken, or of an equal number of them appearing on opposite sides of the same case, it will nearly always be found upon investigation that they are of the cla.s.s described above, whose lack of thorough special training and specialized experience really should have disqualified them from giving testimony. Though any one may call himself an ”expert,” or a ”professional expert,” for that matter, thus opening the door to charlatanism in exactly the same manner that it is opened more or less in all vocations, yet, as a matter of fact, it is very rare that professional handwriting experts testify to a contrary state of facts, and the cases in which they have been proven mistaken are remarkably few.
Experts who have a natural apt.i.tude coupled with experience that produces skill are able, by a system which they have reduced to a science, to detect the spurious from the genuine handwriting with almost unvarying success. But their conclusions are not reached by second sight or sleight-of-hand methods, but rather by painstaking, scientific investigation.
Some of the princ.i.p.al tests applied to determine the genuineness of handwriting are these: The actual and relative slant of the letters or the angles between their stems and the base; the constancy and accuracy with which a straight line is followed as a base; the amount of pressure used on the pen and the part of the stroke where it is applied, and the positions of the line as a whole relative to the edges of the paper. The simplest punctuation mark under the microscope has its own individuality. It would be difficult to find two writers whose semicolons and quotation marks cannot be distinguished at a glance. The dotting of the _i_ and crossing of the _t_ afford an infinite number of relations between points and lines, and in both of these the time element and the freedom of muscular movement play important parts. Even the health and self-control of the penman, as well as the physical circ.u.mstances, show their influence on these little strokes.
The identification of the individual by means of his handwriting is of great value in legal trials and outside of courts. Its use cannot be dispensed with any more than can the knowledge obtained in any other line of science.
One often hears a man boast of his ability to successfully duplicate another person's signature or handwriting, and to the casual observer the counterfeit really will bear a striking resemblance to the original. However, let the two be placed in the hands of an expert on disputed handwriting and he will pretty quickly determine which is the original and which the forgery. Furthermore, he will tell you what process was used to make the duplicate, for there are several methods in use among forgers, and can even tell the composition of the ink.
In the determination of any handwriting there is no actual rule to guide an expert, as each case must be a law unto itself. The time of day that the signature was made and the condition for the moment of the individual have considerable bearing on the case, as has also the writer's general physical condition. Whether he was standing or sitting when the signature was made is a matter of importance. The quality of the paper and the make of the pen also have to be taken into consideration. In the case of forgery, where the forger has employed a finger movement writing with the muscles and apparently without education, there is scarcely any difficulty in arriving at a conclusion. The long flowing hand is easy to detect. When, however, the writing is finical a large ma.s.s of material has to be examined before a decision can be reached.
The testimony of an expert is without doubt the most dangerous kind of evidence when not supported by additional testimony; but, on the other hand, if the known facts fit in well, it is the strongest kind of testimony that can be submitted, and is usually known as ”opinioned evidence.” There probably is no cla.s.s of professional witnesses which is subjected to such severe cross-examination as experts in handwriting, and, considering the great importance of their testimony, they should be ever ready and willing to explain the methods employed by them in arriving at their decision, which, of course, is the result of a comparison of the a.n.a.lyses of several pieces of writing, taking account of all exaggerations, idiosyncrasies and unusual peculiarities.
All evidence of handwriting, except where the witness has seen the writing in question written, is derived from four sources: First, from comparison; second, from the internal evidence of the writing itself; third, from the knowledge of the writing, from having frequently seen a person write; fourth, where one has received letters whose authors.h.i.+p has been subsequently verified by admission, or acted upon in such manner as to receive the approval of the writer. Comparison is made between the writing in question and other writing admitted by the writer to be genuine, or otherwise proved to be so to the satisfaction of the court.
The evidence adduced from comparison is more or less certain according to the skill of the expert and the circ.u.mstances of the case. Internal evidence is such as is presented by the peculiar quality of lines when drawn or worked up by slowly following traced lines, retouched shades, rubbered surface of the paper, and every indication of an artificial or mechanical process of producing writing.
Testimony based upon a knowledge of writing gained from having at some time seen a person write is the most fallacious of all testimony respecting handwriting; it can be only a mental comparison of writing in question with such a vague idea or mental picture as may remain from a casual view of the writing at some time more or less remote; and besides, one may perceive another in the act of writing and yet have little or no opportunity of forming any mental conception of it, even at the time of writing.
In some cases where the courts will permit it the expert witness may fully explain upon what he bases his opinion but it oftener occurs that the trial judge will limit the evidence down to the very narrow scope and the mere relation of such facts as the jury can see. Where a forgery is well executed the difference in general appearance between it and the genuine writing of the person whose signature is questioned, when compared, is very small. The limit put upon expert evidence by the trial judge takes from the effect of the testimony all the benefit of an explanation of the facts upon which the opinion is founded.
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