Forensic Stylistics: Adventures in Unreliability
A forensic stylistic expert testified in an Oregon criminal trial that defendant authored an anonymous letter describing his wife's death. In a bench trial, the judge believed it and convicted defendant of murder. At a post conviction review (PCR), defense offered compelling evidence of innocence, but not so compelling as to nudge the inexorable train of judicial consistency onto a different track.
I prepared a two-inch binder of evidence and documentation invalidating the testimony of the prosecution's stylistics expert, and I so testified at PCR. He only submitted an affidavit in response. My reply to his affidavit was submitted to PCR judge, and I offer selections to show how you can, with a savvy consultant, counter such "guilt by grammar."
- First, unlike most replies to my technical and scientific challenges to evidence by government and prosecution experts, his did not consist solely of ad hominem arguments. There is much of that, as if one may not tell or know of a scientific or technical truth without some kind of paper qualification or communal permission of a particular private-interest group.
- Once more he asserts two 'well-documented' principles, but once more no documentation is offered.
- Having gotten past personal and professional insult, he addresses substantive issues that I raised, exactly where he ought to have started and stopped …. However one cuts it, proper identification theory is against his practices ….
- [H]e only substantiates my criticisms …. For example, he admits that he was wrong to assert all 60 plus 'markers' in Exhibit 1 prove Defendant wrote it, but only a few and then only in various combinations depending on which exemplar [one uses]. Further, he admits the 69 markers are useless in proving any given exemplar is by Defendant because every exemplar has a different combination …. So what, after all, proves Defendant wrote any given document? Answer seems to be: Whatever [the prosecutorial expert] makes up for that document ….
- Note that he likes frequency when it is agreeable to his opinion but dismisses it whenever it is inconvenient, which is by far the greater number of occasions.
- When I give specific reply to his … fallacies, he says I am wrong to be specific. When I take his frequency percentage method and apply it where he does not, he says frequency percentage is wrong. He never gives any criteria for why the right way is wrong sometimes and the wrong way right.
- [T]his paragraph say[s] what his second books says: Withhold critically important data when testifying and just use what will be impressive. I for one find that a bit cynical.
If you need opposing stylistic or linguistic evidence critically dissected, please call me. If you need a testifying linguistic exert of competence and integrity, I recommend Dr. Carole Chaski, CChaski@aol.com.