Ink Testing: Preventing the Impossible
For years ink experts claimed ink-dating could tell when ballpoint ink went on the paper. However, no research had been published, only a steady stream of papers on "the state of the art." Then came a case that should have changed everything but did not.
In United States vs. Bruno, 333 Fed.Supp. 570 (E.D. Penn. 1971), all charges against defendant were dismissed because the ink expert could not account for variables and demonstrated other failings of method. This case did not slow the ink experts, because defendants continued to be jailed and citizens continued to lose property without ink experts bothering to meet the serious challenges in Bruno. Each ink expert used his own special method and asserted all other methods were unreliable. In this assertion each was correct!
Then Scientific Sleuthing Review, Winter 1993, pages 15-16, published "Document Examination: Ink Dating Up-Dated and Up-Ended." It reported research to replicate various methods, but results proved unreliable. Like musk ox under attack, ink experts formed a defensive circle and denounced the researchers as unqualified, unpublished, and, worst of all, unapproved by them.
Recently published research demonstrates that much of what was claimed for years cannot be done. A Texas attorney called me to assist in evaluating a proposal to have a particular ink expert test a document. My contribution helped the attorney obtain a court order forbidding the destructive testing. The ink expert lost $5,000 to $10,000 in income.
Later a colleague in Fresno, CA, referred an attorney to me to assist in evaluating this same ink expert's proposal to test a document in a California probate case involving 27 sections of Central Valley farmland. I wrote a declaration under oath evaluating the ink expert's declaration in support of testing. I cited research papers from Journal of Forensic Sciences demonstrating that current ink dating methods could not differentiate ages of writings as he claimed and that he had failed to specify his method, its reliability, or how he would account for all variables.
His supplementary declaration replied by insulting me rather than addressing the substantive issues I had raised. The attorney forced the opposition to drop their proposal for ink testing and thus all challenge to the probate. There went another $5,000 to $10,000 in easy income.
If you face an ink expert, you also face $10,000 or more to have your own testing done. Enter "In the Matter of the Estate of Wang Teh Huei, Deceased" into your browser. Read Section III for an excellent critique of ink dating. Let me evaluate the opposition's proposal for ink testing in light of the recent research that is exposing the limits of ink testing and establishing preferable, non-destructive, alternatives.