CHAPTER VII

THE HANDWRITING EXPERT

No Law Regulating Experience and Skill Necessary to Constitute an Expert--Expert Held Competent to Testify in Court--Bank Officials and Employees Favored--An Expert On Signatures--Methods Experts Employ to Identify the Work of the Pen--Where and When an Expert's Services Are Needed--Large Field and Growing Demand for Experts--Qualifications of a Handwriting Expert--How the Work is Done--A Good Expert Continously Employed--The Expert and the Charlatan--Qualifying as An Expert--A System Which Produces Results--Principal Tests Applied by Handwriting Experts to Determine Genuineness--Identification of Individual by His Handwriting--How to Tell Kind of Ink and Process Used to Forge a Writing--Rules Followed by Experts in Determining Cases--The Testimony of a Handwriting Expert--Explaining Methods Employed to Detect Forged Handwriting--The Courts and Experts--What an Expert May Testify to--Trapping a Witness--Proving Handwriting by Experts--General Laws Regulating Experts--The Basework of a HandwritingExpert--Important Facts an Expert Begins Examination With--A Few Words of Advice and Suggestion About "Pen Scope"--Detection of Forgery Easy--Rules Herewith Suggested Should Be Observed--Expert Witnesses, Courts, and Jurors