To Prevent, To Investigate, To Uphold and To Supply Law & Order: Questioned Documents

The pieces of evidence are crucial part of the case, it indicates what happened, how violent the act was and what was missing, damaged or left behind the crime scene. Many pieces of evidence do not indicate the violent and brutal assault. A single word or a single note may be perceived as a serious threat. Something One will try to defend against. The fraud is omnipresent on daily basis, there are tools and means how to protect One from harm. The number of pieces of evidence found at the crime scene embrace death, drugs, and disaster; bodies and blood, guns and glass; semen and saliva; bullets, bombs, and bite marks; tool marks and trauma; poisons, homicides, safe paint, footprints, fingerprints and psychoses. We have to take into consideration nonviolent — very subtle — tools of crime which do not bruise, batter, slash ,or shoot and which are used to steal our money or threaten our security more often than guns, knives, pry bars, or bombs. Unsurprisingly some of them can be hold-up notes, extortion notes, or ransom notes; fake, burned, or altered business records; bogus checks and counterfeit $100 dollar bills. Those threats may contain various substances which may seriously threaten and jeopardize Ones life or health.  The documents can be venomous anonymous letters that divide and destroy business and family relationships, as well as,  the writings of a psychopathic killer: taunting obscenities that he has printed in lipstick on his victim’s walls, mirrors, or even on the victim’s body. Some of the documents needing proof of genuineness or forgery, such as wills, contracts, deeds, charge slips, lottery tickets, insurance forms, or medical records. Thorough search of the document is a piece of work to do; the examiner will not conduct a crime scene investigation, interviews or interrogations. These particular investigations belong to laboratories. Being a document examiner is a tough job, One will never be bored. This kind of job is not mechanical or repetitive. A document examiner usually works alone. The examiner works with his eyes and his intellect, he uses various equipment such as stereo-binocular microscope and camera. The accuracy of the conclusions will come from a very specialized apprentice training and experience while working in a vast variety of questioned document cases. The overall responsibility for the examination and conclusive outcome is huge. The examiner's signature at the end of the report means that the conclusions are his or hers, not a committee’s. And he or she will be expected to show judges and jurors why you believe you are right. And you will do it alone. A word about conclusions. Lawyers call them opinions. Lawyers on the other side of the case always call them mere opinions, implying that your conclusions are no more than guesses. And you can count on being asked by opposing lawyers discrediting questions such as:

1.     “Isn’t it possible that you are wrong?”

2.     “How many times have you been wrong?”

3.     “Isn’t it possible that some other document expert will disagree with your opinion?”  

4.     “How many times have you been opposed in court by another document expert?”

5.     “Can you be wrong in this case?”

Forensic document examination is the practice of the application of document examination to the purposes of the law. Forensic document examination relates to the identification of handwriting, typewriting, the authenticity of signatures, alterations in documents, the significance of inks and papers, photocopying processes, writing instruments, sequence of writings and other elements of a document in relation to its authenticity or spuriousness.

The special lab equipment is a necessity to correctly estimate and judge the proper angles of the pattern of writing. Cameras are investigating and reporting tools. You will use cameras to discover and decipher erasures, eradications, and obliterations on documents. You will use cameras to decipher and record invisible entries on burned documents. And you will use your camera for nondestructive (non-chemical) discovery of fraudulent ink entries and for the detection of differences between inks. If questioned documents cannot be brought to your laboratory, then sometimes you must go to them. That means you will have to photograph them to make a record of what you saw and to allow more study of the evidence at your laboratory.

There are two statements, one of them is quite accurate: “I never write the same way twice” which  is not entirely accurate. To be accurate, the statement should be, “I never write exactly the same way twice.” Your handwriting does vary. Trust me, you do not write exactly the same way all the time. But under normal writing conditions your writing features remain consistently similar within a limited range of natural variations. The range of these variations can be found by examining appropriate known samples (exemplars) of a writer. The terms “significant similarities” and “significant differences” are subjective terms.

The examiners must be prepared to offer guidance and assistance in trial preparations and courtroom presentations of the evidence, moreover,  the examiner must always remain an objective participant who does have the responsibility to be a forceful advocate of his or her own findings and conclusions. That includes being prepared to suggest the most effective way to present the examiner’s findings and conclusions at trial. Namely, One may deny everything notwithstanding the circumstances until the hard science plays its definitive role, then, denial is futile, the forgery is proven.

Acknowledgements:

The Police Department;

https://www.politie.nl/mijnbuurt/politiebureaus/05/burgwallen.html and a Chief Inspector – Mr.Erik Akerboom ©

Bibliography:

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4.      Blueschke, A. and Lacis, A.: Examination of line crossings by low KV scanning electron microscopy (SEM) using photographic stereoscopic pairs, J. Forensic Sci., vol. 41 (no. 1), 80, 1996

5.      Crown, D.A.: The differentiation of electrostatic photocopy machines, J. Forensic Sci.,vol. 34 (no. 1), 142, 1989.

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10.  Oron, M. and Tamir, V.: Development of some methods for solving forensic problems encountered in handwritten and printed documents, Intl. Crim. Police Rev., no.324, 24, Jan. 1979.

11.  Osborn, A.S.: Questioned Documents, 2nd ed. (facsimile reproduction), Nelson-Hall, Chicago, IL, circa 1985.