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LIMA: Handwriting: Forensic and serv Handwriting Analysis ss @ Page 1 of 2 ALL INFOMMATION CONTAINED HEREIN IS UNCLASSIFIED DATE la-L0-c00o BY 60324 TC DAW SRA Laec LIMA: Forensic Handwriting Analysis Handwriting analysis has the unusual distinction of being an area of interest in both literature departments and forensic science, Professional forensic document examiners have produced a very substantial body of work, of which I only scratch the surface. Book length introductions to forensic document examination include: « Wilson R. Harrison, Suspect Documents: Their Scientific Examination, 2nd edition (London, 1966) = Roy A. Huber and A. M. Headrick, Handwriting Identification: Facts and Fundamentals (Boca Raton, FL, 1999) = Ron Morris, Forensic Handwriting Identification: Fundamental Concepts and Principles (London, 2000) » An extensive Bibliography of Forensic Handwriting Analysis is available online. This was produced by Tom Davis, who is both an academic in the English Department of Birmingham University, and a professional document examiner. One issue that forensic handwriting analysts often confront is the possibility of forgery. LEVELS OF PROOF AND THE RELIABILITY OF HANDWRITING ANALYSIS Comparing samples of handwriting does not necessarily give a straightforward unambiquous result. Uncertainties about what may be a style characteristic, the quality of the samples, and the likely degree of variation, means there is often a degree of uncertainty. So how fallible is handwriting analysis? Handwriting analysis comes under scrutiny when it is used as evidence in court. Tom Davis has written an article on Forensic Handwriting Analysis in Britain, which describes the level of care in accumulating and presenting evidence, and attention to wording in summarising conciusions, which is demanded of the expert witness. More systematic attention has been paid to the methodological basis of handwriting analysis in the USA, where in 1993 the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, which set new criteria for the admissibility of scientific evidence, later expanded to include all expert opinion testimony. The Supreme Court formulated a set of factors about proposed testimony that a presiding judge should consider in order to determine "the scientific validity and thus the evidentiary relevance and reliability of the principles that underlie a proposed submission.” These factors include: Whether the theory of technique can be and has been tested. Whether the theory or technique has been subjected to peer review and publication. The known or potential rate of error. The existence and maintenance of standards controlling the technique's operation, uw fk WN Whether the theory or technique is generally accepted within the relevant scientific community. Evidence must be shown to meet these criteria before it can be presented in court. The ruling placed considerable pressure on handwriting analysis to prove that it was a genuine form of expertise according the Daubert criteria. Some years previous to the Daubert ruling, D. Michael Risinger, Mark P. Denbeaux, and Michael J. Saks published an article with the striking title, ‘Exorcism of Ignorance as a Proxy for Rational Knowledge: the Lessons of Handwriting Identification "Expertise", University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 137 (1989), 731-92. It accused handwriting analysis of being a pseudo-expertise, its practitioners of being reluctant to allow their work to be tested independently, and of failing to show an acceptable level of accuracy in the few empirical studies that had taken place. Handwriting analysts have responded to these challenges in a number of ways. There have been further tests on the _Teliability of analysts’ conclusions. An interesting study highlights the problem of false matches: Moshe Kam, Gabriel Fielding, Robert Conn, ‘Writer Identification by Professional Document Examiners’, Journal of Forensic Sciences, 42 (1997), 778-86. Kam et al. conducted a test on both professionally trained handwriting analysts, and a control group. The study revealed a statistically significant difference in preponderance to make type-I errors (false matches). Ai/ groups performed roughly equally in detecting matches, doing so about 88 per cent of the time; however the wrong association rate of non-professionals was about 38 per cent - compared to under 7 per cent among professionals. This difference may well be linked to the methodological difference noted before: professionals start by looking for differences http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/ren/publications/lima/handwritingforensic/ 5/10/2005