Disputed Handwriting Part 12

Economy of living, curiously enough, is marked by a spare use of ink.

The terminals are abrupt and blunt, leaving off short. Where economy is the result of circ.u.mstances, not disposition, only some of the words are thus ended, while others have open, free curves and the long letters are looped.

Generosity and liberality may be seen likewise in the end curve of every word. Where these characteristics are inconstant and variable, the disposition will be found to be uncertain--liberal in some matters, while needlessly economical and stingy in others.

When a bar is placed below the signature, it means tenacity of purpose, compared with extreme caution; also a dread of criticism and adverse opinions. No dots to the letter "i" means negligence and want of attention to details, with but a small faculty of observation. When the dots are placed at random, neither above nor in proximity to the letter to which they belong, impressionability, want of reflection and impulsiveness may be antic.i.p.ated.

Ambition and gratified happiness give to the whole writing an upward tendency, while the rest of the writing is impulsive without much firmness.

Sorrow gives every line of the writing a downward inclination.

Temporary affliction will at once show in the writing. A preoccupied mind, full of trouble, cares little whether the letter then written is legible or not; hence the writing is erratic, uncertain, and the confusion of mind is clearly exhibited in every line. Irritable and touchy persons slope the nourishes only, such as the cross of the letter "t" and the upper parts of the capital letters. When the capital letters stand alone in front of the words and the final letters also are isolated, it betokens great creative power and ideality, such as would come from an author and clever writer.

The most personal part of a letter or doc.u.ment is, of course, the signature, but alone without any other writing it is not always a safe guide to character. In many instances the line placed below or after a signature tell a great deal more than the actual name. A curved bending line below a signature, ending in a hook, indicates coquetry, love of effect, and ideality. An exaggerated, common-like form of line means caprice, tempered by gravity of thought and versatility of ideas. An unyielding will, fiery, and at the same time determined, draws a firm hooked line after the signature. A wavy line shows great variety in mental power, with originality. Resolution is shown in a plain line, and extreme caution, with full power to calculate effect and reason a subject from every point of view, is shown by two straight dashes with dots, thus --:--

The personality of a writer can never be wholly separated from his works. And in any question of date or authenticity of a doc.u.ment being called in dispute, the value of graphology and its theories will be found of the utmost importance, for the various changes in the style of handwriting, or in the spelling of words, although, perhaps, so minute and gradual as seldom to be remarked, are, nevertheless, links in a chain which it would be extremely hard to forge successfully so as to deceive those acquainted with the matter as well as versed in its peculiarities.

See specimens of handwriting in Appendix with descriptions thereof.

CHAPTER XIX

HANDWRITING EXPERTS AS WITNESSES

Who May Testify As An Expert--Bank Officials and Bank Employees Always Desired--Definition of Expert and Opinion Evidence--Both Witness and Advocate--Witness in Cross Examination--Men Who Have Made the Science of Disputed Handwriting a Study--Objections to Appear in Court--Experts Contradicting Each Other--The Truth or Falsity of Handwriting--Sometimes a Ma.s.s of Doubtful Speculations--Paid Experts and Veracity--Present Method of Dealing with Disputed Handwriting Experts--How the Bench and Bar Regard the System--Remedies Proposed--Should an Expert Be an Adviser of the Court?--Free from Cross-Examination--Opinions of Eminent Judges on Expert Testimony--Experts Who Testify without Experience--What a Bank Cas.h.i.+er or Teller Bases His Opinions on--Actions and Deductions of the Trained Handwriting Expert--Admitting Evidence of Handwriting Experts--Occupation and Theories That Make an Expert--Difference Between an Expert and a Witness--Experts and Test Writing--What Const.i.tutes an Expert in Handwriting--Present Practice Regarding Experts--a.s.suming to Be a Competent Expert--Testing a Witness with Prepared Forged Signatures--Care in Giving Answers--A Writing Teacher as an Expert--Familiarity with Signatures--What a Dash, Blot, or Distortion of a Letter Shows--What a Handwriting Expert Should Confine Himself to--Parts of Writing Which Demand the Closest Attention--American and English Laws on Experts in Handwriting--Examination of Disputed Handwriting.

While the qualification necessary for the permission of a witness to testify in court as an expert is largely discretionary with the judge, such discretion is usually exercised with so great liberality that it is not often that a witness offered as an expert is refused by the court on the ground of deficient qualification. It is usually held that any one possessed of anything more than ordinary opportunity for studying or observing handwriting may give expert testimony, which the jury may receive for what it is deemed to be worth. Bank officials and employees are declared by most courts to be competent witnesses. If on any previous occasion one has given testimony, that fact is usually accepted as a sufficient qualification, or if he has ever seen the person write whose writing is in question, he is deemed competent.

With such limited qualification it is no matter of surprise that expert testimony is sometime made to appear at very great disadvantage. Incompetent and mercenary witnesses will seek employment, and since there are always two sides to a case, and on each side lawyers who spare no efforts for victory, there is a chance for every kind of witness, as there is for every kind of attorney.

Expert evidence is that given by one especially skilled in the subject to which it is applicable, concerning information beyond the range of ordinary observation and intelligence.

Opinion evidence is the conclusions of witnesses concerning certain propositions, drawn from ascertained or supposed facts, by those who have had better opportunities than the ordinary individual or witness to judge of the truth or falsity of such propositions, or who are familiar with the subject under inquiry, and give their conclusions from the facts within their own knowledge concerning certain questions involved.

Let us look at the question as it presents itself to the layman, to men of science and experience, to microscopists, to bank officials and others having much to do with writing. An expert in handwriting occupies a totally anomalous position when called before a court as a witness. Technically he is both a witness and an advocate, sharing the responsibilities of both but without the privileges of the latter. He has to instruct counsel and to prompt him during its course. But in cross examination he is more open to insult because the court does not see clearly how he arrives at his conclusions, and suspects whatever it does not understand. Nearly every person who has had to appear in court as an expert has been subjected to more or less humiliation by the judge.

It may be, perhaps, cynically hinted that men who have made the science of disputed handwriting a study should be willing to bear all kinds of arrogance for the public good. In the first place, many thoroughly competent experts in any department of science distinctly and peremptorily refuse to be mixed up in any affair which may expose them to cross examination. Many experts will investigate a matter, give a report of their conclusions, but absolutely refuse to appear in court.

Another not very edifying spectacle is that of paid handwriting experts standing in court and contradicting each other, or pretending to contradict in the interests of their respective clients, is not exactly right. These men would change places and reverse positions and arguments if necessary. Men of the world are tempted to say that "Science can lay but little claim to certainty in demonstrating the truth or falsity of handwriting and the whole procedure is more a ma.s.s of doubtful speculations than a body of demonstrable truths." But it must be remembered that a professional expert must be paid for his services, and always tell the truth as it appears to him.

It is clearly seen that our present method of dealing with experts regarding disputed handwriting is found to be on all sides not just exactly satisfactory. Oftentimes the public is skeptical and many honest and thorough experts are scandalized. The bench and bar share this feeling but unfortunately are disposed to blame the individual rather than the system.

There is no question but what this unanimity of dissatisfaction will vanish as soon as a remedy is seriously proposed. To that, however, we must come unless we are willing to dispense with expert evidence altogether.

It is contended by many that an expert should be the adviser of the court, not acting in the interest of either party in a lawsuit. Above all things an expert ought to be exempt from cross-examination. His evidence, or rather his conclusions, should be given in writing and accepted just as the decisions of the bench on points of law.

Opinions of eminent judges have differed widely respecting the reliance to be placed upon testimony founded upon expert comparisons of handwriting, but it should be remembered that those opinions have been no more varied than has been the character and qualifications of the experts by whose testimony they have been called forth.

It is too true that very frequently persons have been allowed to give testimony as experts who were utterly without experience in any calling that tends to bestow the proper qualifications for giving expert testimony.

The constant professional observation of handwriting in any line of financial or commercial business tends to confer expert skill. It should be said here, however, that the average bank cas.h.i.+er or teller bases his opinions and his identifications generally upon the pictorial effect without recourse to those minuter and more delicate points upon which the skilled expert rightly places the greatest reliance. Such testimony can not be compared for accuracy or value with that of the scientific investigator of handwriting. It follows, then, that one who is endowed with more than ordinary acuteness of observation, and has had an experience so varied and extensive as to cover most of these lines, is likely to be best fitted for critical and reliable expert work.

In a word, the trained expert eye, even on so slight a thing as a simple straight line, will detect certain peculiarities of motion, of force, of pressure, of tool-mark, etc., that in normal circ.u.mstances the result will stand for its author just as his photograph stands for him. Now, this being undoubtedly true within certain limitations, how more than incontestable must be the proposition to any rational man that if, instead of a simple undeviating pen-stroke, lines that run to curves and angles and slants, and shades and loops and ticks, and enter into all sorts of combinations, such as any specimen of handwriting must, however simple, bear inherent evidences of authors.h.i.+p that yield their secrets to the expert examiner as the hieroglyphics on an Egyptian monument do to a properly educated antiquarian.

The propriety of admitting the evidence of handwriting experts in investigating questions of forgery is now recognized by statute in most states. Common sense dictates that in all investigations requiring special skill, or when the common intelligence supposed to be possessed by the jury is not fully adequate to the occasion, we should accept the a.s.sistance of persons whose studies or occupations have given them a large and special experience on the subject. Thus such men of experience or experts are admitted to testify that work of a given description is or is not executed with ordinary skill; what is the ordinary price of a described article; whether described medical treatment or other practice was conducted with ordinary skill in a specific case; which of two colliding vessels, their respective movements being given, was in fault; whether one invention was an infringement of another, looking at the models of both; and other cases already mentioned.

This is as near to an exact definition of who are admissible as experts as it is possible for us to come. In all these cases it is to be observed that the expert is to speak from no knowledge of the particular facts which he may happen to possess, but is to p.r.o.nounce the judgment of skill upon the particular facts proved by other witnesses. Of course the court must be first satisfied that the witness offered is a person of such special skill and experience, for if he be not, he can give no proper a.s.sistance to the jury; and of course, also, very much must at least be left to the discretion of the court, relative to the need of such a.s.sistance in the case; for very often the matter investigated may be so bunglingly done that the most common degree of observation may be sufficient to judge it.

Where a witness is called to testify to handwriting, from knowledge of his own, however derived, as to the hand of the party, he is not an expert, but simply a witness to a fact in the only manner in which that fact is capable of proof. Nor is he an expert who is called to compare a test writing, whose genuineness is established by others, with the writing under investigation, if he have knowledge of the handwriting of the party, because his judgment of the comparison will be influenced more or less by his knowledge, and will not be what the testimony of an expert should be, a pure conclusion of skill.

But when a witness, skilled in general chirography, but possessing no knowledge of the handwriting under investigation, is called to compare that writing with other genuine writings that have been brought into juxtaposition with it, he is strictly an expert. His conclusions then rest in no degree on particular knowledge of his own, but are the deductions of a trained and experienced judgment, from premises furnished by the testimony of other witnesses.

One of the palpable anomalies of the present practice regarding experts on handwriting is that a person who has seen another write, no matter how ignorant the observer may be, is competent to testify as to whether or not certain writing is by the hand of the person he has once seen engaged in the art of writing, while an expert handwriting witness may only testify that the hand appears to be simulated but may not point out the differences between specimens of genuine writing and the instrument in controversy.

It is safe to presume that the apparently unreasonable position of the law was a.s.sumed with a good object in view, and it is probable that the object was the protection of the court from the swarm of so-called experts which might be hatched by a laxity in the wording of the law.

Few things would be easier for a dishonest person than to swear he was a competent expert, and then to swear that a doc.u.ment was, in his opinion, forged or genuine, according to the requirements of his hirer. The framers of the practice in reference to expert testimony on doc.u.ments seem to have had in mind that the only possible kind of testimony as to doc.u.ments was that based upon impressions; and that the only method of coming to a conclusion was by giving words to the first mental effect produced on a witness after he has looked at a writing.

For this reason the practice has grown up in many trials of preparing carefully forged signatures and producing them before the witness as a test of how far he is able to distinguish genuine from forged signatures.

However expert a witness may be, however successful in discriminations of this kind, self-respect and a becoming modesty should induce him to refuse to answer them without distinctly stating that his answer, which gives his best judgment at the time, must be subject to reversal if by longer and more thorough investigation it appear that the opposite view were the true one.

When there is presented before a court of law a doc.u.ment, of which it is important to know whether a part or the whole of the body, or the signature, or all, is actually in the handwriting of some person whose writing or signature in other exhibits is admitted to be genuine, the counsel on each side usually seeks the aid of one or more handwriting experts.

Usually a teacher of writing is called, but more often the cas.h.i.+er or paying teller of a bank is preferred. There seems to be a good reason for choosing a bank cas.h.i.+er or a paying teller, for the man upon whose immediate judgment as to genuineness of signatures, reinforced by a large and varied knowledge of human nature and quick observation of any suspicious circ.u.mstances depends the safety of a bank, has certainly gained much experience and is not apt to be easily deceived in the kind of cases coming daily before him. How much the average cas.h.i.+er and paying-teller depends upon the trifling circ.u.mstances attending the presentation of a check, the appearance of the person presenting it, the probability of the drawer inserting such a sum, etc., becomes apparent when one has heard a number of these useful officers testify in cases where they are deprived of all these surroundings, and required to decide whether a certain writing is by the same hand which produced another writing, both being unfamiliar to them.

In this case they are obliged to create a familiarity with the signatures of a man whose character and peculiarities they have never known.

They miss the aid of some feature, such as a dash, a blot, or the distortion of a letter, which would recall to them the character of the writer. Most of the best experts of this cla.s.s confess that they cannot tell on what their judgment is based. They simply think that the writing is not by the same hand as that admitted to be genuine.

"No," they will tell you, "it is not merely superficial resemblance. I don't know what it is, but I feel sure," etc. These witnesses are more frequently right than the more pretentious professional expert. The former trust to the instantaneous impressions which they receive when papers are handed to them; the latter too often give their attention to the merely superficial features of chirography without getting beyond the more obvious resemblances and differences which are frequently the least important.

While the expert in handwriting should confine himself to the concrete examinations of the paper, ink, seals, etc., and leave to the counsel the task of reasoning on the purport of the words added, and all other matters not allied to the materials left as the result of the forgery, yet it would be unreasonable to neglect altogether these means of corroborating a previously formed suspicion, or directing a course of inquiry.

That expert would be more or less than human who could shut his eyes to the importance of the fact that certain words containing evidence in the manner of their formation or their position that raised doubts as to their genuineness by their import gave to the person who might have written them benefits which he would not have derived in their absence.

The parts of a writing which demand the closest attention are those which have been made unconsciously and which are not easily noted by a superficial view. The height, the spread of the letters, the peculiarities of the endings, the nourishes, and the general shape are things which the forger observes and imitates, often with success; but the curvature of a letter in its different parts is not easily appreciated by the naked eye.

There are but few laws in the United States regarding the functions of handwriting experts. Courts in various states have followed decisions made by higher courts where matters affecting expert testimony have been carried to the court of last resort. A code of uniform laws on this question is being agitated and will soon be called to the attention of all state legislatures. England has adopted a simple and concise law on admissibility of testimony of handwriting experts.

In the absence of such laws a few extracts from Stephens' Law of Evidence, an English work, will be found interesting and instructive:

Article XLIX: "When there is a question as to any point of science or art, the opinions upon that point of persons specially skilled in any such matter are deemed to be relevant facts.

"Such persons are hereinafter called experts.

"The words 'science or art' include all subjects on which a course of special study or experience is necessary to the formation of an opinion, and amongst others the examination of disputed handwriting.

"Ill.u.s.tration: The question is, whether a certain doc.u.ment was written by A. Another doc.u.ment is produced which is proved or admitted to have been written by A.