Weekly update for May 22

AFTE conference

• Alicia, Heike, Haley
• slides for the talk: Matching Bullet Lands: Full and Degraded

Handwriting Examination

• Focus shifts from letters to content
• Subconscious, habitual formations are repeated
• Size, slope, pressure, lifts, spacing, position to baseline, height relationships, beginning and ending strokes, direction of strokes, etc…
• Principle of Individuality: no two writers share the same combination of handwriting characteristics given sufficient quantity and quality of writing to compare.
  • Twin studies
  • Peter Wienberger
• Variation

Handwriting Examination

Handwriting Examination

• Writing skill
• Document examiner training
  • Two years
  • Form-perception testing
• Current proccess
  • Independent examination of the questioned document
  • Side by side comparison
  • Evaluate the sginificance of the combination of characteristics observed during comparison
  • Peer review

Handwriting Examination

• ASTM standard guide
• The FBI has no established number of “points” required to establish a match
• Software tools
  • CEDAR-FOX