Scope of Document Examination
A forensic document examiner is intimately linked to the legal system as a forensic scientist. Forensic science is the application of science to address issues under consideration in the legal system. FDEs examine items (documents) that form part of a case which may or may not come before a court of law.
Common criminal charges involved in a document examination case fall into the "white-collar crime" category. These include identity theft, forgery, counterfeiting, fraud, or uttering a forged document. Questioned documents are often important in other contexts simply because documents are used in so many different contexts and for so many different purposes. For example, a person may commit murder and forge a suicide note. This is an example wherein a document is produced directly as a fundamental part of a crime. More often a questioned document is simply the by-product of normal day-to-day business or personal activities.
The American Society for Testing and Materials, International (ASTM) publishes standards for many methods and procedures used by FDEs. E30.02 is the ASTM subcomittee for Questioned Documents, and ASTM Standard E444-09 (Standard Guide for Scope of Work of Forensic Document Examiners) indicates there are four components to the work of a forensic document examiner. It states that an examiner "makes scientific examinations, comparisons, and analyses of documents in order to:
- establish genuineness or nongenuineness, or to expose forgery, or to reveal alterations, additions or deletions,
- identify or eliminate persons as the source of handwriting,
- identify or eliminate the source of typewriting or other impression, marks, or relative evidence, and
- write reports or give testimony, when needed, to aid the users of the examiner's services in understanding the examiner's findings."
Some FDEs limit their work to the examination and comparison of handwriting but most inspect and examine the whole document in accordance with this ASTM standard.
Read more about this topic: Questioned Document Examination
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