Document Examiner, Examiner of Questioned Documents, Forensic Document Examiner: The examiner makes critical examinations, comparisons and analysis of documents in order to:
1. Establish genuineness or to expose forgery, or to reveal alterations, additions or deletions.
2. Identify persons through documents or parts of documents by showing the authority of handwriting or the sources of typewriting.
3. Aid in fixing liability or culpability for any kind of fraud that makes use of documents.
4. Generally helps protect the integrity of documents.
General Duties and Qualifications
Examiners in this field are sometimes known by the term "Handwriting Expert." Document examination, as herein defined, includes expertise in handwriting identification. It does not involve the employment of CALLIGRAPHIC or ENGROSSING SKILLS nor does it involve the study of GRAPHOLOGY commonly defined as the art of determining CHARACTER or PERSONALITY. Questions about documents arise in business, finance, civil and criminal trials, or in any manner affected by the integrity of written communication and receipts.
Typical problems in this field are the identification of handwriting, typewriting, ink, paper, writing instruments and relationships of documents. Other problems are the decipherment of obscure, deleted or damaged parts of documents. The work often includes a study of the information carried by a document for discovery of evidence of spuriousness, identification of persons, or to show significant relationships.
Microscopes and other optical aids, photographic cameras and a wide variety of photographic material adaptable for use with a wide variety of lighting methods, including radiations in INFRARED and ULTRA-VIOLET are used in the examinations.
Questions about documents are answered by the application of knowledge gained from experience and application of knowledge and techniques in a number of other fields such as chemistry, physics, mathematics, etc. The field also embraces manufacturing processes and the materials that go into the production of documents, as well as the methods, machines, instruments and human agencies by which the parts of documents are formed and brought together.
The results are usually incorporated into written reports for use by administrative and executive officers, boards, commissions, lawyers and individuals, and are often made the subject of testimony under oath in civil and criminal trials which require the demonstration, by use of visual aids, of reasons for conclusions of determinations and require further explanation under cross-examination.
Who Is Qualified?
There are no colleges or universities that offer a diploma or degree in handwriting identification. The only way an individual can adequately receive instruction in this profession is by serving an intensive apprenticeship training program under the direct supervision of senior court qualified document examiners. This usually occurs within governmental crime laboratories, as these are the only facilities that can afford the high cost of such a lengthy training program.
