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
Famous quotes containing the words scope of, scope, document and/or examination:
“Happy is that mother whose ability to help her children continues on from babyhood and manhood into maturity. Blessed is the son who need not leave his mother at the threshold of the world’s activities, but may always and everywhere have her blessing and her help. Thrice blessed are the son and the mother between whom there exists an association not only physical and affectional, but spiritual and intellectual, and broad and wise as is the scope of each being.”
—Lydia Hoyt Farmer (1842–1903)
“The scope of modern government in what it can and ought to accomplish for its people has been widened far beyond the principles laid down by the old “laissez faire” school of political rights, and the widening has met popular approval.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“What is a diary as a rule? A document useful to the person who keeps it, dull to the contempory who reads it, invaluable to the student, centuries afterwards, who treasures it!”
—Ellen Terry (1848–1928)
“Maybe it’s understandable what a history of failures America’s foreign policy has been. We are, after all, a country full of people who came to America to get away from foreigners. Any prolonged examination of the U.S. government reveals foreign policy to be America’s miniature schnauzer—a noisy but small and useless part of the national household.”
—P.J. (Patrick Jake)