In reality, there are enormous differences between Mohamed Atta's handwriting and the handwriting on the anthrax letters and envelopes. But, the True Believer seems to argue that if you look hard enough in a big enough sample you will find that some of the characters of the alphabet drawn by Mohamed Atta on some occasion kind of - sort of - look a little bit like the same characters on the anthrax letters and envelopes. And, to the True Believer that's evidence that Atta wrote the letters.
I've created a web page HERE comparing Atta's handwriting to that on the anthrax documents, proving beyond any reasonable doubt that the handwriting on the anthrax document does NOT look like Mohamed Atta's normal handwriting.
In my analysis, I show how Mohamed Atta typically drew characters of the alphabet (and numbers), I provide various examples, and (where possible) I compare those multiple examples to multiple examples of the same characters and numbers on the anthrax documents. The differences are obvious. For example, Mohamed Atta typically drew his 1's in a manner that made them look like 7's. The illustration above shows an example of that. There's no similarity whatsoever to the 1's on the anthrax documents. BUT, if you include the lines on the form as part of the writing, the 1 drawn by Atta would have a line across the bottom, and Atta's single-stroke 1 would look a little bit like a 1 drawn with three strokes on the anthrax documents. That is bizarre reasoning used to argue that handwriting that is truly different can be viewed as somewhat similar in order to justify a True Believer's beliefs.
Ed
Today, "Anonymous" sent me this message via an email: "It was Bruce Edward Ivins who wrote with an open "4" - thus, under your reasoning, you have proved Bruce did not write the Fall 2001 anthrax letters."
ReplyDeleteI've always stated that the facts say that a child wrote the anthrax letters and addressed the envelopes.
However, the FBI says that the handwriting evidence is inconclusive, and, as a result, they do not use handwriting evidence as part of their case against Dr. Ivins.
My evidence is NOT proof that Ivins didn't write the letters. It is evidence that helps prove that Ivins didn't write the letters.
In another email, "Anonymous" wrote: "Dr. Ivins did not write the date similar to the writer of the anthrax letters ; the FBI should disclose the handwriting comparison"
I'm not sure what date he's talking about. My analysis says that Ivins wrote the date on the media letter, attempting to use the child's writing style by not quite matching it. But, I think "Anonymous" is probably making some kind of comparison between dates Ivins wrote somewhere else and the dates on the letters.
I'm not sure what would be accomplished if the FBI released all the different opinions they got from "handwriting experts." Anyone can see that there are BIG differences between Ivins' handwriting and the handwriting on the anthrax letters. But, that doesn't mean Ivins couldn't have disguised his handwriting in some way - as he wrote the letters. It's possible. But, the facts say that he used a child to do the actual writing.
Ed
Ed agrees that the handwriting does not look like Bruce Ivins' handwriting. The FBI's handwriting analysis should be disclosed, along with its handwriting comparison of the handwriting of Atta, El-Shukrijumah and Jdey. Thanks, Mr. Lake, for continuing to draw attention to this important issue. There are no privacy issues warranting withholding of the comparison of the various handwriting samples.
ReplyDelete"Anonymous" wrote: "Ed agrees that the handwriting does not look like Bruce Ivins' handwriting."
ReplyDeleteAnd this is news to you? I've been saying for ELEVEN years that a child was used to write the letters, and you now have just figured out that that means Ivins didn't write the letters himself?
"Anonymous" also wrote: "The FBI's handwriting analysis should be disclosed"
Which handwriting analysis? It appears they have many DIFFERENT handwriting analyses, and no two of them fully agree. The only mention of the handwriting on the anthrax letters in the DOJ Summary report is some NON-EXPERT opinions on pages 89-90:
"In addition, a witness who had received a number of packages and cards over the course of several years in the late 1990s and early 2000s was shown copies of the letters and envelopes used in the anthrax attacks. The witness thought that the handwriting on the envelope addressed to Senator Daschle reminded the witness of Dr. Ivins’s writing. If the witness were to receive a package with that writing on it, the witness would think of Dr. Ivins. The witness noted that, in particular, the style of the block letters with alternating heights stood out, as did the slant of the writing. The witness said that this was the type of writing Dr. Ivins used when he disguised his handwriting as part of a joke. As the witness studied the letters, the witness noted that the “E” and the “R” in the letter to the New York Post also looked familiar. The witness stated that these letters also reminded the witness of when Dr. Ivins disguised his handwriting as a joke. The witness described this “disguised” handwriting as being similar to Dr. Ivins’s standard handwriting, and that one could tell that he was trying to disguise his handwriting to a limited extent. Another witness familiar with the handwriting of Dr. Ivins in many contexts said the same thing."
So, NON-EXPERTS say that the writing looked like Ivins' handwriting when he was DISGUISING his handwriting.
Since there was NO "EXPERT handwriting analysis evidence" pertaining to the letters and envelopes used in the case against Bruce Ivins, there doesn't appear to be any justification for requesting the analyses from experts which don't agree.
To try to argue that it would be impossible for the handwriting on the anthrax letters and envelopes to be the result of Ivins disguising his handwriting would be preposterous.
Anonymous also wrote: "There are no privacy issues warranting withholding of the comparison of the various handwriting samples."
It's not a matter of privacy. It's a matter of relevance. The FOIA rules allow for exemptions, and since the handwriting has NO RELEVANCE, any request could probably be denied because the handwriting materials:
"Related solely to internal personnel rules and practices
Ed
It's not a matter of privacy. It's a matter of relevance. The FOIA rules allow for exemptions, and since the handwriting has NO RELEVANCE,
ReplyDelete---------------------------------------------------------
No relevance to what? To guilt or innocence? But that's why handwriting analysis was (presumably) done in the first place: to use as another skein of evidence AGAINST Ivins if there were a match. To then declare that it's irrelevant because it's a poor match is: 'Heads I win, tails you lose.' Said another way: relevant.
-----------------------------------------------------
"Related solely to internal personnel rules and practices["]
Where does that quotation come from?
Ed, if you think a handwriting forensic analysis report under FOIA is "related solely to internal personnel rules and practices", you are mistaken. See case law.
ReplyDeleteImportantly, the criminal investigation is closed so (b)(7) does not apply.
Finally, Dr. Ivins is deceased and so (b)(6) does not apply.
If you (inexplicably) favor withholding expert reports and instead want to rely on witness accounts (constituting an opinion of a lay person), it is unfortunate that the DOJ shredded the civil deposition of the witness, eh? But thanks to the importance of pointing to the witness account and the spoliation that occurred. Destruction of evidence is a very serious issue.
R. Rowley asked: "No relevance to what? To guilt or innocence?"
ReplyDeleteNeither. If it had anything to do with guilt OR innocence, it would then be relevant to the case.
There's evidently little or no agreement among the "experts" about the handwriting on the letters and envelopes, so the testimony of handwriting experts has no value toward proving guilt OR innocence in the Amerithrax case.
R. Rowley also asked: "Where does that quotation come from?"
If you click on FOIA rules allow for exemptions" that will take you to the source. Or you can copy and paste this: http://www.sec.gov/foia/nfoia.htm
Ed
Ed, any expert report relating to Dr. Ivins or the Amerithrax crime should be produced to GAO, which is reviewing the matter. Duh.
DeleteAnd who said otherwise?
DeleteThe GAO is reviewing the Amerithrax investigation. So, naturally they'd look at ALL materials that were part of the investigation.
That has nothing to do with what can be obtained via an FOIA request.
Ed
"Anonymous" wrote: "Ed, if you think a handwriting forensic analysis report under FOIA is "related solely to internal personnel rules and practices", you are mistaken. See case law."
ReplyDeleteIt's not a matter of "case law." It's a matter of FOIA rules.
If the handwriting reports were not used in the case (and they weren't), then "case law" cannot apply. As a lawyer, you should understand that.
The rest of your comment also ignores the fact that "case law" does not apply. What you appear to want is to do your own investigation of the case to show that the FBI didn't do an adequate job (because their findings did not match with your beliefs). Without any basis, you assume that there is something relevant in whatever was hidden or destroyed. Your assumptions do not mean anything to the DOJ (or to me).
Ed
FOIA has statutory exemptions. The exemption you quoted does not apply. Go to that statutory provision and you will see the case annotations. There are very good digests online. The DOJ itself has a manual that cites extensive case law and covers all the statutory exemptions.
DeleteThe case law interprets the statutory language. The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia interpreting the subsection, absent a Supreme Court case, is controlling.
Your suggestion that a party only produces the documents to the other party that it thinks favors its position has no basis. Indeed, the very purpose of the GAO review is study what the FBI missed, or misconstrued. It is to ferret out the exculpatory information that it withheld from production -- such as the documents relating to the 52 rabbits.
You did not ask for the handwriting analyses for good reason. It blows your argument that a First Grader wrote the letters to smithereens.
Anonymous wrote: "Your suggestion that a party only produces the documents to the other party that it thinks favors its position has no basis."
ReplyDeleteI made no such suggestion. I clearly stated just the opposite, making it VERY clear that the testimony by "handwriting experts" favors NEITHER side in the case. The testimony of "handwriting experts" regarding the anthrax letters and envelopes was NOT going to be used in court, and therefore is not part of the case against Bruce Ivins.
Of course, the defense could argue that the handwriting is not that of Bruce Ivins. But they do not need the FBI's experts to do that. They can just produce their own "experts." And the FBI can produce a bus-load of "experts" to argue that Ivins COULD have disguised his handwriting when writing the letters and addressing the envelopes. The defense would then have the task of "proving the negative" to argue that Ivins could not have disguised his handwriting to write the letters and address the envelopes.
Anonymous also wrote: "You did not ask for the handwriting analyses for good reason. It blows your argument that a First Grader wrote the letters to smithereens."
TOTAL NONSENSE. My analysis is confirmed by the fact that no two "handwriting experts" seem to agree about the anthrax handwriting AND none have specifically addressed the differences between the writing on the first mailing and the second mailing, specifically (1) the change in the size of the handwriting, (2) the change in the way certain characters of the alphabet were drawn, and (3) the change from not using punctuation to using punctuation.
I'm HOPING that the GAO will go further in the area of handwriting analysis. The only result they can logically come up with is that Ivins did not write the letters in his normal hand, and they either don't know how he disguised his handwriting, or there could be a possible explanation that has not been previously described by any "authority."
The GAO should have no problem looking at the reports from handwriting experts, but no outsider will have access to such reports because they are not relevant to the case against Ivins and only show the internal workings at the FBI, i.e., their internal rules and practices. That makes them exempt to FOIA requests.
Ed
7. There are NO FACTS which prove that a child did NOT write the anthrax letters and address the envelopes.
ReplyDelete==============================================
Short of getting a 100% match* to a(n)(adult) suspect's handwriting, and/or a confession by the printer, what "fact" could even theoretically "prove" (Mister Lake's word) that a child did not write the anthrax letters and address the envelopes?
*Of course, this would have to be done by (a)certified document examiner(s) to make it admissible in court, but the theoretical doesn't hang on that.
R. Rowley wrote: "what "fact" could even theoretically "prove" (Mister Lake's word) that a child did not write the anthrax letters"
DeleteI was in the process of changing that sentence when Mr. Rowley posted his message. That's why his message is before the revised version of my post.
The new sentence says, "There are NO FACTS which prove that an adult wrote the anthrax letters and addressed the envelopes."
I made the change so no one could argue that I was asking Truthers to "prove the negative."
In answer to Mr. Rowley's question: If you can prove that Ivins or some Muslim terrorist wrote the letters, that would prove that a child did NOT write the letters. I suppose it's theoretically possible to find some other way to prove such a thing -- by somehow proving that the letter writer was an adult who deliberately imitated the writing of a child just starting first grade.
Ed
Just to make it clear to everyone that the claims by "Anonymous" have nothing to do with reality:
ReplyDelete1. The FACTS say that Dr. Bruce Edwards Ivins was the anthrax mailer.
2. The FACTS say that a child wrote the anthrax letters and addressed the envelopes.
3. The FACTS say that Bruce Ivins was NOT a child.
4. The FACTS say that Mohamed Atta was NOT a child.
5. The FACTS say that NONE of the terrorists associated with 9/11 were children.
6. Arguing that Ivins did NOT write the anthrax letters is an agreement with my hypothesis, NOT a disagreement.
7. There are NO FACTS which prove that an adult wrote the anthrax letters and addressed the envelopes.
8. Proving WHICH child wrote the letters could be problematic if the child (who would be around 19 years old now) doesn't remember doing the writing or denies doing the writing.
9. There are no FACTS which conclusively prove that Ivins wrote the letters by disguising his own handwriting.
10. If no one can prove WHICH child Ivins used to write the letters and address the envelopes, there is no reason why the FBI should mention the subject - other than to say that Ivins disguised his handwriting in some way.
11. The FACTS show that Bruce Ivins had motive for creating such letters.
12. The FACTS indicate that Bruce Ivins had access to children who could have done the writing on the letters.
Ed
Ed,the young colleague he was sweet on is the one who he sent several anonymous gifts about a decade ago. Her interview on the subject was over a half decade after the letters. Even without the passage of a half decade, a lay opinion is not admissible on such an issue because it would be deemed unreliable. But if you think her opinion, as characterized by the prosecutor in an Amerithrax summary that has no citations, is worth exploring, by all means the GAO should interview. No opinion, lay or expert, would be considered without the actual exemplars. The DOJ shredded her civil deposition but that should not stand in the way of GAO addressing these issues with her. The GAO is then free to publish all of its interviews.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous wrote: "Even without the passage of a half decade, a lay opinion is not admissible on such an issue because it would be deemed unreliable."
ReplyDeleteIt wouldn't be entered as "expert testimony." It's eyewitness testimony and therefore fully admissible.
Anonymous also wrote: "No opinion, lay or expert, would be considered without the actual exemplars.""
Not true. Testimony about handwriting from an eyewitness is no different from testimony about seeing some person in some place. It doesn't require "exemplars."
I agree that the GAO can address the issues with the witness, and, if they choose to do so, they can also publish their interviews with the witness.
Ed
Anonymous wrote: "Even without the passage of a half decade, a lay opinion is not admissible on such an issue because it would be deemed unreliable."
ReplyDeleteIt wouldn't be entered as "expert testimony." It's eyewitness testimony and therefore fully admissible.
================================================
No, it would only be "eyewitness testimony" if the person personally witnessed Ivins (or whoever) printing the texts.
Just because you use your eyes for a task related to a criminal case and subsequently testify* doesn't make you an eyewitness. The expert witness would ALSO be using his/her eyes for the purpose of comparing Ivins' printing to that of the Amerithrax text. But such an expert witness would not be an "eye witness" and such testimony, if admitted, would not be "eye witness testimony".
But don't trust my word or Anonymous' word: look at the OJ Simpson criminal trial and try to find a single reference to Henry Lee as "an eye witness". You won't be able to. He used his eyes, but he was no eye witness.
*If this WERE the case then every detective in every murder case would be "an eye witness" because he used his eyes to examine the murder scene, collect evidence etc. The use of the term "eye witness" is MUCH more restricted than Mister Lake seems to think.
R. Rowley wrote: "Just because you use your eyes for a task related to a criminal case and subsequently testify* doesn't make you an eyewitness. The expert witness would ALSO be using his/her eyes for the purpose of comparing Ivins' printing to that of the Amerithrax text"."
ReplyDeleteNot true. A witness tells the jury what he or she saw. It's up to the jury to decide if the witness is credible or not. And, the defense can also challenge the witness's memory.
The witness knew Ivins very well. She saw the handwriting on the notes Ivins sent her. She observed that the handwriting on the anthrax letters looked to her to be similar to Ivins' disguised handwriting on the notes she'd received. That is all fully admissible testimony.
Ed
Ed, the FBI's David Hardy disagrees with you on your understanding of FOIA.
DeleteYou should do better research and learn to cite the relevant controlling case law.
Otherwise, you should not address issues that you are not qualified to address.
A good man knows his limitations.
Anonymous,
DeleteYou are always claiming that some "expert" agrees with you, but you never produce any actual statement or links for verification. And, you do not seem to understand that it's usually possible to find an "expert" who will agree with anything, no matter how preposterous it is.
And, as we've seen with your absurd claim that the handwriting on the anthrax letters matches that of Mohamed Atta, you don't seem to understand evidence at all. All you do is post irrelevant material and nonsensical arguments and then try to get others to shoulder the "burden of proof" to show you are wrong.
You should do better research and actually cite what the "expert" said and provide a link to where he said it.
Otherwise, you should not address issues that you are not qualified to address.
A good man knows his limitations.
Ed
Ed, the name of the case is Miranda, not Maranda. Please correct it. Thanks.
DeleteAnonymous,
DeleteThanks. It didn't look right when I wrote it on my web site comment, but I didn't bother to check it. It's been fixed.
Ed
eye·wit·ness [n. ahy-wit-nis, ahy-wit-nis; v. ahy-wit-nis] Show IPA
ReplyDeletenoun
1.
a person who actually sees some act, occurrence, or thing and can give a firsthand account of it: There were two eyewitnesses to the murder.
================================================
The act or occurrence in this instance would be the actual printing of the Amerithrax texts.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/eyewitness
According to Wikipedia:
ReplyDeleteEyewitness testimony is the account a bystander gives in the courtroom, describing what they perceived happened during the specific incident under investigation. Ideally this recollection of events is detailed, however this is not always the case. This recollection is used as evidence to show what happened from an witness' point of view.
In the USA, juries are responsible for assessing the credibility of witness testimony presented in a trial.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyewitness_testimony
A witness is someone who has, who claims to have, or is thought, by someone with authority to compel testimony, to have knowledge relevant to an event or other matter of interest. In law a witness is someone who, either voluntarily or under compulsion, provides testimonial evidence, either oral or written, of what he or she knows or claims to know about the matter before some official authorized to take such testimony.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witness
Ed
R. Rowley wrote: "The act or occurrence in this instance would be the actual printing of the Amerithrax texts."
ReplyDeleteNot true. The witness is stating what she observed. Period. It's no different from testifying that Joe X. looked "pale" when he entered a room. The witness does not have to be an expert on skin tones. The expert does not have to have witnessed what caused Joe X. to become "pale." The witness is only testifying to what he or she observed from his or her point of view at a given point in time.
The prosecutor uses such a witness to help fill in a overall picture of events. The jury decides if the witness is believable or not.
Ed
R. Rowley wrote: "The act or occurrence in this instance would be the actual printing of the Amerithrax texts."
DeleteNot true. The witness is stating what she observed. Period
==============================================
No, she is making a comparison, doing a graphological evaluation without:
1)having the two documents in front of her for side-by-side comparison (something genuine expert witnesses testifying on this are REQUIRED to do).
2)having the background (experience/training) of a genuine document examiner.
----------------------------------------------
It's no different from testifying that Joe X. looked "pale" when he entered a room.
----------------------------------------------
Boy, you apparently have neither respect for nor
knowledge of how difficult genuine document analysis is!
Apples and oranges.
R. Rowley wrote: "Boy, you apparently have neither respect for nor knowledge of how difficult genuine document analysis is!"
DeleteYou continue to misunderstand.
The witness would NOT be testifying as an "expert witness." She would be testifying as an ordinary witness to what she SAW and what she THOUGHT when she saw it.
Or to put it more precisely, she'd be testifying to WHAT SHE TOLD THE FBI about similarities between the handwriting on notes from Ivins and the handwriting on the anthrax letters.
The prosecutor would first ask Mara Linscott (for example) about gifts Ivins would drive hundreds of miles to deliver to her door in the middle of the night and the notes that were with the gifts.
The question posed by the prosecutor would then be something like, "Miss Linscott, could you please tell the jury what you told the FBI about the notes you received with gifts from Dr. Ivins and your thoughts about the handwriting."
Ed
R. Rowley wrote: "Boy, you apparently have neither respect for nor knowledge of how difficult genuine document analysis is!"
DeleteYou continue to misunderstand.
The witness would NOT be testifying as an "expert witness." She would be testifying as an ordinary witness to what she SAW and what she THOUGHT when she saw it.
==============================================
She would be doing the TASK of an expert witness, since handwriting analysis of even a comparative sort is a technical field. That's impermissible.
(Contact ANY attorney------even one who thinks Ivins 100% guilty and he/she will tell you the same thing).
------------------------------------------------
Haven't I been the one telling you now for years that what's in the FINAL REPORT is mostly legally inadmissible in a court of law?
This is just a cut-and-dried example of that.
------------------------------------------------------
HANDWRITING COMPARISON - Usually requires some special training and experience in handwriting analysis, and in addition, a familiarity with the handwriting of the individual in question. Most courts allow the expert "a high level of belief" rather than absolute certainty, and a sample size of 10 points of comparison is becoming standard.
http://faculty.ncwc.edu/mstevens/425/lecture01.htm
R. Rowley wrote: "She would be doing the TASK of an expert witness, since handwriting analysis of even a comparative sort is a technical field. That's impermissible."
DeleteTOTAL NONSENSE. You endlessly misunderstand the basics of court procedures.
A witness can testify as to what she SAW. If she SAW that the handwriting on the anthrax letters resembled the handwriting on notes Ivins sent to her, she can testify to that.
A witness can testify to what she told investigators. If she told investigators that the handwriting on Ivins' notes resembled the handwriting on the anthrax letters, she can testify to what she said.
An "expert witness" can't testify about anything until the JUDGE agrees that his testimony would be relevant and valid.
If I had the time, I'd look around the net to see if I could find some trial transcripts from a criminal case. They would show what ordinary witnesses can talk about in court.
Ed
Mr. Rowley,
ReplyDeleteIt seems you are trapped by your own misconceptions. You endlessly argue that nothing is "evidence" unless by itself it proves guilt.
Such a belief has nothing to do with reality.
In reality, a prosecutor will have one witness after another testify for WEEKS to "paint a picture" of what the evidence says happened. One tiny piece of that picture could be a witness's testimony that Ivins sent her notes using a disguised handwriting that the witness believes was similar to the writing on the anthrax letters.
Totally admissible. The jury decides if they want to believe it or not.
Ed
Mr. Rowley,
DeleteIt seems you are trapped by your own misconceptions. You endlessly argue that nothing is "evidence" unless by itself it proves guilt
====================================================
I never wrote any such thing.
You have ATTRIBUTED that thought to me frequently. And I have denied it several times, in this venue and in others.
But having a grandfather who lived in Central NJ in the 19th Century, doesn't have any bearing (any bearing alone, any bearing in conjunction with other facts) on whether a suspect committed a crime in NJ in the early 21st Century.
ANY crime (murder, theft, jay-walking etc). It's elementary logic. And elementary logic is where Mister Lake is lacking.
R. Rowley wrote: "But having a grandfather who lived in Central NJ in the 19th Century, doesn't have any bearing (any bearing alone, any bearing in conjunction with other facts) on whether a suspect committed a crime in NJ in the early 21st Century."
DeleteSo you BELIEVE. But your BELIEFS have NOTHING to do with reality.
You appear to be once again arguing that if it isn't evidence of guilt all by itself then it isn't evidence. And you just claimed you aren't doing that.
Saying something doesn't have any "bearing" on whether a suspect committed a crime in NJ in the 21st Century without listening to the argument about how it DOES have bearing is the same as claiming your rules override the rules of all courts.
If Ivins chose to mail the letters near a place that had meaning to him, then evidence to that effect is totally admissible - whether you accept it or not.
And that is elementary logic and elementary law, two areas where you appear to be greatly lacking.
Why wouldn't it be admissible?
Because YOU DON'T BELIEVE it would be admissible?
Because YOU DON'T BELIEVE it's logical?
You create rules that fit your beliefs instead of trying to understand what the real rules of the criminal justice system are.
Ed
Saying something doesn't have any "bearing" on whether a suspect committed a crime in NJ in the 21st Century without listening to the argument about how it DOES have bearing is the same as claiming your rules override the rules of all courts.
Delete============================================
You have been given DOZENS of opportunities here at your own venue and at other venues to EXPLAIN in what way the domicile of Ivins's 19th Century grandfather has relevance and you have been unable to do so (even in informal layman's language). The problem is: logic. The one "fact" has nothing to do with the other (the alleged crime) and I explained why:
1)a bank robber doesn't need to have 19th Century (or 20th Century, or 21st Century) ancestor(s) in a state, region, or city to commit a bank robbery there. It serves no purpose in the bank robber's reasoning.
2)the considerations bank robbers usually take into consideration include: What are the security arrangements at the bank?, Do police patrols frequently go by?, Are there closed circuit TV cameras around?, How much money is likely to be there?, Might the bills be marked? does the bank guard carry a gun? What would my escape route be? Etc. (and the etc. might be very long but, no matter how hapless the bank robber, he will be making what seem to him practical considerations.
3)people mailing letters and packages, either for innocent purposes or for criminal ones ALSO make decisions about that in practical ways.The given practical consideration may be: to disguise who sent the letter/package, but that can be accomplished without the arcane aspect of the grandfather.
Just give me ONE INSTANCE (and I mean one instance in American history) where a bank robbery location was determined by the ancestral location of one of the perp's relatives!
Just give me one instance (and I mean one instance in American history) of someone mailing something from a location because the location was near a (former) ancestral home!
What you are doing is: attributing to Ivins some (as far as we know)unprecedented mental process involving mail box selection, and then CITING THIS preposterous mental process as evidence of his guilt!
It's as irrelevant as irrelevant can be. AND circular reasoning to boot.
(And note, there's no "argument" made in the FINAL REPORT as to why this is relevant, so even Rachel Lieber couldn't figure out its relevance).
R. Rowley wrote: "You have been given DOZENS of opportunities here at your own venue and at other venues to EXPLAIN in what way the domicile of Ivins's 19th Century grandfather has relevance and you have been unable to do so (even in informal layman's language)."
DeleteYou are still trapped by your absurd misconception that nothing is evidence unless by itself it proves something.
Page 60 of the Summary report describes "Dr. Ivins' fascination with codes." Page 61 says,
"Dr. Ivins also liked to send “care packages” and other items in the mail, while disguising his identity in an effort to have the recipient – frequently Former Colleague #1 – “decode” who the sender was."
The Expert Behavioral Analysis Report (EBAP) says on page 11:
"The return address on the letters to Senators Daschle and Leahy was also significant. As discussed in greater detail in the analysis, the ZIP Code Dr. Ivins selected likely was related to his passion for codes and laden with associations for him."
On page 31 and 32 the EBAP says,
"The ZIP code on the envelopes did not correspond to Franklin Park, N.J., however, but rather to Monmouth Junction, N.J."
And, on page 45 the EBAP says,
"The youngest of three boys, Bruce Edwards Ivins was born April 22, 1946 and reared in southwest Ohio, in Lebanon, where his father, Randall, owned and managed the Ivins-Jameson Pharmacy. The Ivins family traces its American roots to 17th century New Jersey. Bruce Ivins’ great-great-grandfather Thomas Ivins was born in what was then known as Monmouth, N.J., before moving to Ohio in the 19th century.
For reasons whose significance will become clear later in this narrative, it is important to note that Bruce Ivins was aware of this family genealogy. In a file where he kept important papers, he saved a letter, dated August 26, 1986, from a paternal relative. This letter specifically related the genealogy of the Ivins family, and listed Thomas Ivins and his father, Barzillai, whose ancestors had also been born in Monmouth, N.J."
On page 50 the EBAP says,
"A national women’s fraternity, KKG had been established in 1870 at Monmouth College in Illinois."
Page 60 shows evidence that Ivins knew where the KKG sorority was formed. These are his own words:
"The organization is one of the oldest women’s fraternities in the country, founded in 1870 at Monmouth College."
Page 129 of the EBAP report goes through the connections between Monmouth and Bruce Ivins and says this on page 130:
"By using the ZIP code of Monmouth Junction, Dr. Ivins may have been portraying in code the connection between KKG and his own identity. Monmouth Junction may have represented the union of father (Monmouth, N.J.) and mother (Monmouth College, KKG), i.e., himself. And it also represented his entanglement, his obsession with KKG.
In other words, in two inter-related ways, the Monmouth Junction may have represented Dr. Ivins himself. With the return address on his Senatorial letters, he appears to have revealed the identity — at the deepest level — of the mailer. Dr. Ivins, in short, signed his letters."
So, you may think this is all psychiatric mumbo-jumbo, and you may argue that Ivins' fascination with codes, his history of sending coded messages, the link between the zip code on the senate letters, and Ivins' connections to places named "Monmouth" are all just coincidences, but a JURY might see it as another of too many coincidences.
The evidence indicates that the ZIP code in the return address on the senate letters relates to Ivins himself and is a form of "signature".
When all the pieces are put together, the evidence says beyond a reasonable doubt that Bruce Ivins was the anthrax killer.
Ed
"So, you may think this is all psychiatric mumbo-jumbo,"
Delete------------------------------------------
Yup and then some.
=========================================
The evidence indicates that the ZIP code in the return address on the senate letters relates to Ivins himself and is a form of "signature".
=============================================
No. There's no "evidence" of that. That's just a bald assertion* and bald assertions, even when corraled together with other bald assertions, don't constitute evidence. There's no indication that Ivins even knew the zip code of his grandfather's FORMER house. That he was interested in the house and/or the zip code the site later acquired is unestablished, will never be established.
* The tip off of the mind reading involved here is the language used (above) "Dr. Ivins may have been portraying" ;"may have represented" ; etc.
"May have" leaves open the possibility of "may not have".
It's all based on mind reading and low class mind reading at that.
R. Rowley wrote: "No. There's no "evidence" of that."
DeleteYes, there IS evidence of that. Lots of it. You just don't accept evidence unless it supports your personal beliefs.
R. Rowley also wrote: "There's no indication that Ivins even knew the zip code of his grandfather's FORMER house."
The evidence has nothing to do with his grandfather's "former house." It has to do with the name "Monmouth." You need to understand the evidence before you can argue against it.
R. Rowley wrote: "The tip off of the mind reading involved here is the language used (above) "Dr. Ivins may have been portraying" ;"may have represented" ; etc."
Is there some other way to describe a probable motive and what may have been going on in someone's mind? If so, please tell us.
Do you think they should have done things your way, i.e., made declarations instead of describing what the facts suggest may have been Ivins' motive?
Here is a comment of yours from another thread:
"Said another way, the lawyers at DoJ 'bought' what the Task Force claimed about the science and Ivins' likely guilt (indeed, lacking the scientific background(s) necessary to have an informed opinion on the subject, they, those lawyers, almost literally HAD to buy it, if only to 'sell' it better in the FINAL REPORT"
Without evidence, you simply declare that the DOJ 'bought' what the task force claimed.
Without evidence, you simply declare that the people at the DOJ didn't have the scientific background to question scientific evidence.
Without evidence, you simply declare that the DOJ HAD to buy the evidence so they could 'sell' it in the "final report."
Is that the way you think government investigators should operate - YOUR way - by making baseless declarations based upon beliefs instead of projecting the most likely motive based upon the facts?
I disagree. I think it is better to work with evidence and facts than to operate only on beliefs, the way you appear to operate.
Ed
Posted by Mister Lake:
ReplyDelete--------------
One tiny piece of that picture could be a witness's testimony that Ivins sent her notes using a disguised handwriting that the witness believes was similar to the writing on the anthrax letters.
---------------------------------------------
Let me repeat a bit of that "that the witness BELIEVES..."
--------------------------------------------
This would be inadmissible: "Calls for speculation on the part of the witness" and/or "Calls for a conclusion on the part of the witness". There you have a "fact witness" veering off impermissibly into 'expert witness' territory, and doing it WITHOUT the limits on a genuine expert witness (ie in the case of comparing writing exemplars, the expert has to do it in a side-by-side comparison(something the 2 persons mentioned in the FINAL REPORT did not do) and, apparently, since I have no reason to doubt Anonymous on this point, those exemplars have to be entered into evidence). Mister Lake is trying to do an end-around on this by making an amateur do the work of an expert witness merely by labelling that witness "eye witness". Doesn't work. If it did, no attorney would ever bother with expert witnesses AT ALL.
---------------------------------------------------------
Fact Witness Law & Legal Definition
A fact witness is a person with knowledge about what happened in a particular case, who testifies in the case about what happened or what the facts are. Fact witness testimony consists of the recitation of facts and/or events as opposed to an expert witness, whose testimony consists of the presentation of an opinion, a diagnosis, etc.
http://definitions.uslegal.com/f/fact-witness/
R. Rowley wrote: "This would be inadmissible: "Calls for speculation on the part of the witness" and/or "Calls for a conclusion on the part of the witness"."
ReplyDeleteNot true. If the prosecutor ASKED the witness what she believes, then the defense could object that the prosecutor was asking for speculation from the witness. But, that's not what happens in a trial.
If there had been a trial of Bruce Ivins, the prosecution wouldn't bring Mara Linscott (for example) to the stand to answer a single question: "Do you believe the handwriting on cards you received from Dr. Ivins was similar to the handwriting on the anthrax letters." That is not the way witnesses are questioned.
In court, Mara Linscott would have been on the witness stand for days, maybe a full week.
She would have testified to Ivins work habits.
She would have testified to how many spores they made per week.
She would have testified to how serial dilutions were done.
She would have testified to how many plates were used for serial dilutions.
She would have testified to what happened to the plates after the serial dilutions were done.
She would have testified to how long the plates remained in the autoclave bags before they were destroyed.
She would have testified to whether she ever looked inside any of the autoclave bags after they'd laid around for weeks.
She would have testified about the trips Ivins made to deliver gifts to where she was living.
She would have testified to how long a drive it must have been for Ivins to deliver those gifts at night.
She would have testified if Ivins wife ever mentioned to her those long drives by her husband.
She would have testified to what kind of gifts she got from Ivins.
She would have testified to the clues Ivins provided to make her guess who sent the gifts.
She would have testified to what was written on the cards that came with the gifts.
She would have testified to what she TOLD INVESTIGATORS about the handwriting on the anthrax letters as compared to Ivins' handwriting.
She would have testified about Ivins' hatred for New York City.
She would have testified about Ivins' concerns about the vaccine program being shut down.
She would have testified about Ivins' concerns about being transferred to a different vaccine project.
She would have testified about any comments Ivins made about politicians who wanted to shut down the vaccine program.
Etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc.
Ed
Ed,
DeleteMara Linscott (see 302) would explain that it would have taken Dr. Ivins a couple of hours to work on the animals on nights and weekends.
You are really confused and have never interviewed Mara.
Although the DOJ shredded her deposition, her 302 is available. Stop making stuff up.
R. Rowley wrote: "This would be inadmissible: "Calls for speculation on the part of the witness" and/or "Calls for a conclusion on the part of the witness"."
ReplyDeleteNot true. If the prosecutor ASKED the witness what she believes, then the defense could object that the prosecutor was asking for speculation from the witness. But, that's not what happens in a trial.
=========================================
You're right: and the reason it doesn't happen is: the lawyers (mostly) know the rules of evidence, and, unless they think the judge is a doddering incompetent, they don't bother trying to slip in stuff that is: opinion, speculation, beyond the competence of the witness in a technical area (note: BOTH cryptography------remember the 'amino acid code' of immaculate conception?-------and handwriting comparisons are technical areas), and/or beyond the scope.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Back to Mister Lake:
--------------------
She would have testified about any comments Ivins made about politicians who wanted to shut down the vaccine program.
---------------------------------
And which politicians were those?
David Hardy, Section Chief of the Record/Information Dissemination section of the FBI has oft explained in Affidavits the difference between an open case and a closed case. for the purpose of applying exemption (b)(7):
ReplyDeleteFor examplle in Barrett v. US, 2010 112259, which involved the Zodiac case, the Court explained:
"The Declaration of David Hardy, Section Chief of the Record/Information Dissemination Section of the FBI, and correspondence from the Napa County Sheriff's Department and San Francisco Police Department attached as exhibits thereto evidence that the Zodiac case investigation is ongoing, and Plaintiff [*8] has presented no admissible evidence that the investigation has been completed or is inactive. 1 (Hardy Decl. PP 11, 19, 27, Ex. D, Ex. E.) Therefore, Defendant has demonstrated the absence of a genuine issue of material fact as to the existence of an "enforcement proceeding" under Exemption 7(A)."
The Amerithrax investigation, on the other hand, is closed.
So what?
DeleteWho said anything about open or closed cases?
Ed
Ed,
DeleteIf you were at all qualified to even address any legal issue -- such as the question whether handwriting reports are discoverable under FOIA -- you would know that the key exemption is (b)(7) and is addressed in litigation by David Hardy the head of the FBI branch in charge of FOIA. ((b)(6) does not apply because the suspect is dead). In his affidavits submitted to court, Mr. Hardy distinguish between cases like the Zodiac case (which is dormant) and the Amerithrax case (which is closed). Instead of referring to statutory language that you don't understand relating to personnel policies, you should always go to the case annotations. Your argument that the subsection relating to personnel matters applies to a handwriting report in a criminal investigation is really clueless. You simply are not qualified to address legal issues any more than you are to disagree with experts like Dr. Fraser-Liggett or Dr. David Relman. Remember: Do the research. Cite the cases. Otherwise, sit on your hands.
R. Rowley wrote: "And which politicians were those?"
ReplyDeleteAccording to NPR:
"Bruce Ivins may have targeted Sens. Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy with anthrax-laced letters in 2001 because he saw them as bad Catholics owing to their votes in favor of abortion rights, officials close to the investigation say.
There was some speculation that Ivins had targeted Daschle and Leahy because he saw them as holding up funding that would have helped pay for his research into an anthrax vaccine.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93385756
There are better reports on why Ivins probably targeted Leahy, but I don't have the time right now to hunt for them.
Ed
I asked for politicians who wanted to shut down the vaccine program, and you supply SPECULATION ("Ivins may have") about Daschle and Leahy's Catholicism/position on abortion!
DeleteFollowed by...
"There was some speculation..." followed by stuff about Daschle and Leahy.
That (speculation)isn't evidence.
You were the one who wrote (writing about Mara Linscott):
"She would have testified about any comments Ivins made about politicians who wanted to shut down the vaccine program."
------------------------------------------
So, is that speculation too?
Inadmissible!
---------------------------------------------------
There are better reports on why Ivins probably targeted Leahy, but I don't have the time right now to hunt for them.
----------------------------------------------------
The point is: the "reports" are speculation too, merely speculation that made its way to journalists (or was invented by journalists).
Mr. Rowley,
DeleteYou don't seem to be able to follow what's going on.
I'm not giving testimony in the case.
The subject is what a co-worker of Ivins could have said in court about Ivins' comments about politicians.
If Ivins made statements to the co-worker that indicated he was angry with Senators Leahy and/or Daschle because they were trying to shut down the anthrax vaccine program, that would be TOTALLY admissible. It is what she heard. She is a witness to what Ivins said to HER or in her presence.
PERIOD. It goes to motive.
Ed
Mr. Rowley,
DeleteYou don't seem to be able to follow what's going on.
I'm not giving testimony in the case.
--------------------------------------
Nobody said you were. I merely said that, when pressed for EVIDENCE that Ivins told a co-worker (Linscott)that he was upset with this or that politician regarding plans to shut down the vaccine program, you responded with press SPECULATION to that effect. C'mon, the FINAL REPORT is 3 years and 3 months old now; you yourself have apparently read thousands of supplementary pages. Isn't there anything THERE (ie in the official DoJ documents), where even in hearsay, Ivins is heard making nasty remarks about Daschle or Leahy? If not, then it REMAINS speculation and inadmissible.
------------------------------------------
But that's just one example. How Mister Lake KNOWS that
"In court, Mara Linscott would have been on the witness stand for days, maybe a full week." is a mystery.
Also mysteries are how he knows the various questions/areas of inquiry that Linscott would have been subjected to by the prosecution (about half of that follows):
---------------------------------------------
She would have testified to Ivins work habits.
She would have testified to how many spores they made per week.
She would have testified to how serial dilutions were done.
She would have testified to how many plates were used for serial dilutions.
She would have testified to what happened to the plates after the serial dilutions were done.
She would have testified to how long the plates remained in the autoclave bags before they were destroyed.
She would have testified to whether she ever looked inside any of the autoclave bags after they'd laid around for weeks.
She would have testified about the trips Ivins made to deliver gifts to where she was living.
---------------------Snip---------------
[above only the halfway mark in Mister Lake's assertions about COMPLETELY THEORETICAL testimony by Linscott]
Clearly Linscott is the 'star witness' of Mister Lake's completely imaginary trial of Bruce Ivins.
All this is speculation, but speculation rendered the Lakeian way: via bold assertion.
R. Rowley wrote: "Isn't there anything THERE (ie in the official DoJ documents), where even in hearsay, Ivins is heard making nasty remarks about Daschle or Leahy? If not, then it REMAINS speculation and inadmissible."
DeleteThere is information to that effect somewhere. But, I've got to take a break for lunch and to head to the health club for a workout, so it'll have to wait until I get back. I think it may be in Ivins' emails. That's going to take a lot of searching. But, I also recall it in some FBI documents. That'll require research, too.
R. Rowley also wrote: "Clearly Linscott is the 'star witness' of Mister Lake's completely imaginary trial of Bruce Ivins."
I wouldn't call here "THE star witness," but she has testimony to Ivins work, to his long drives at night, etc. So, she would have been a very IMPORTANT witness.
R. Rowley also wrote: "How Mister Lake KNOWS that
"In court, Mara Linscott would have been on the witness stand for days, maybe a full week." is a mystery."
I never said I "know" any such thing. It's just an assumption based upon how much Linscott could testify about and how long similar witnesses with lots of information in other trials remained on the witness stand.
Isn't this whole discussion about an IMAGINARY trial of Bruce Ivins? You've been arguing for months that lay testimony wouldn't have been admissible in this IMAGINARY trial, but when I make a statement about how long an important witness would likely be on the stand, suddenly it's all about an IMAGINARY trial.
You're either just not paying attention, or you also have a "double standard" for what people can discuss on this forum.
Ed
I found a very nice flowchart of rules for the admissibility of evidence here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.envlaw.com.au/handout6.pdf
It included one box which contained the following:
OPINION
[Normal] witnesses must give a
plain account of what they
actually perceived through
their own physical senses,
devoid of inference, evaluation,
interpretation, belief or
opinion.
EXCEPTION: Expert
witnesses may give opinion
evidence where (i) the fact in
issue is such that special skill
or learning is required to assess
it; and (ii) the witness has
sufficient skill or learning in
that area: Clark v Ryan (1960)
103 CLR 486 per Dixon CJ at
489-492; Weal v Bottom (1966)
40 ALJR 436 per Barwick CJ
at 438-9; ss76-80 EA.
-------------------------------------------
Again, Mister Lake is trying to have 'normal witnesses' testify about things only expert witnesses, under very restricted circumstances, may testify about.
Just looking at the address http://www.envlaw.com.au/handout6.pdf I can see that it is about AUSTRALIAN law, not about U.S. laws.
DeleteIn case you are unaware of it, Ivins would have been tried in a US COURT, not an Australian court.
Ed
Just looking at the address http://www.envlaw.com.au/handout6.pdf I can see that it is about AUSTRALIAN law, not about U.S. laws.
Delete-------------------------------------
Sorry, My goof.
This is from the Cornell University Law School's web site: http://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/fre/rule_701
ReplyDelete-------------
Rule 701. Opinion Testimony by Lay Witnesses
If a witness is not testifying as an expert, testimony in the form of an opinion is limited to one that is:
(a) rationally based on the witness’s perception;
(b) helpful to clearly understanding the witness’s testimony or to determining a fact in issue; and
(c) not based on scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge within the scope of Rule 702.
------------
In other words, a lay witness can testify to what she saw, what her OPINION was about what she saw, and what she told the investigators about what she saw and thought.
If she saw the handwriting on the anthrax letters and perceived it to be similar to Ivins' disguised handwriting, she can so testify in court. It's a lay witness opinion, NOT an "expert opinion."
Ed
Ed, you are mistaken. Handwriting analysis is specialized knowledge within the scope of Rule 702. I have uploaded the FBI Lab publications on this.
DeleteAnonymous, you are mistaken. The issue is NOT "handwriting analysis." The issue is what a lay witness observed and told the FBI.
DeleteEd
Ha! What Mara Linscott told the FBI is that Dr. Ivins time on nights and weekends would be explained as the work with the animals -- she explained that it would take a couple of hours and was a one-person job. You can't accept that. That's why you don't quote her.
DeleteAnother link: http://definitions.uslegal.com/l/lay-opinion-testimony/
ReplyDeleteLay opinion testimony refers to evidence given by a witness who is not qualified as an expert but who testifies to opinions or inferences.
USCS Fed Rules Evid R 701 provides that a witness may testify in the form of opinion if the opinion is rationally based on the perception of the witness and helpful in understanding his/her testimony or in determining a fact in issue. Lay witness opinion is admissible so long as it would be helpful to the factfinder and is rationally based on personal perception. This rule recognizes that a lay witness' opinion can more helpful at times than the raw data on which the opinion is based. An opinion is often a convenient shorthand device. For example, testimony that a person was "excited" or "angry" is more evocative and understandable than a long, physical description of the person's outward manifestations.
Ed
It boggles my mind that Ed and Richard spend time debating the issue whether handwriting analysis requires specialized learning under Rule 702 without every pulling the relevant on-point case!
DeleteIt boggles my mind that "Anonymous" who claims to be a lawyer cannot understand that a witness describing what she saw and thought about what she saw does NOT make her an "expert witness."
Delete"Anonymous" needs to try to understand the difference between a lay witness and an expert witness. The comments about handwriting given to the FBI were by a LAY WITNESS, NOT an expert witness.
Ed
Mr. Rowley,
ReplyDeleteThere's some case law at this link: http://federalevidence.com/blog/2011/february/admitting-lay-opinion-testimony-under-fre-704b
I like this statement:
"[D]efense counsel must limit his inquiry of any lay witnesses to observations of defendant's behavior only; no witness will be permitted to state an opinion or inference as to whether the defendant did or did not have the mental state of condition constituting an element of the crime charged or of a defense thereto. Such ultimate issues are matters for the trier of fact alone."
In other words, the lay witness can testify to what Ivins said or wrote and what it indicated to her personally, but she cannot testify to whether his statements or writings MEAN he committed the crime. What the statements MEAN to the legal case is for the judge and/or jury to decide.
Ed
Though I don't disagree with Mister Lake's paragraph:
Delete--------------------
In other words, the lay witness can testify to what Ivins said or wrote and what it indicated to her personally, but she cannot testify to whether his statements or writings MEAN he committed the crime. What the statements MEAN to the legal case is for the judge and/or jury to decide.
-------------------------------------------------
I would observe that the paragraph that Mister Lake "like[s]" from the URL linked is a statement by the trial judge, a statement that is presented by the URL/10th Circuit Court (an appellate court) as an example of ERRONEOUS reasoning vis-a-vis FRE-704b. Indeed it is just that erroneous interpretation of FRE-704b (and its ramifications at defendant's trial) that caused the Tenth Circuit to overturn the conviction.
This is indicated by the first paragraph of the URL:
Reversing and remanding robbery and firearm convictions based on the erroneous limitation of lay witness testimony to non-opinion testimony, adversely affecting the defendant's insanity defense; under FRE 704(b) the limitation of opinion testimony on the ultimate issues in the case applies to expert witnesses, not lay witnesses; the restriction prejudicially affected the defense planning, witness preparation and examination, in United States v. Goodman, __ F.3d __ (10th Cir. Jan. 18, 2011) (No. 09-5087)
Mr. Rowley,
DeleteIt's kind of hard to find a perfect example to use. I don't see that it matters what the case was actually about. What matters is what the judge ruled regarding the difference between how lay testimony is viewed in court versus expert testimony.
I thought the quote would clarify the central issue in our debate.
I think we're going to have to start defining exactly what our disagreement is. That way, we can avoid going off on irrelevant side issues. And we can more easily figure out who is right and who is wrong.
Ed
If Ed wanted to be published on the subject of the handwriting of the Fall 2001 anthrax letters, he should have obtained the key handwriting experts after the case was closed in February 2010 and they were available (as to all individuals who were deceased).
ReplyDeleteIn contrast, as my FOIA request, I submitted:
Record/Information Dissemination Section
Attn: FOIPA Request
170 Marcel Drive
Winchester, VA 22602-4843
Dear FOIA Officer:
Re: Closed Amerithrax case relating to Fall 2001 anthrax letters: Request for handwriting comparison for Bruce Ivins and Mohammed Atta
This is a request under the Freedom of Information Act.
Date range of request: September 25, 2001 to the present.
Description of Request: The report of handwriting experts, whether by the FBI's Questioned Documents Units, or other experts, comparing the handwriting of the late Bruce Ivins and the late Mohammed Atta to the handwriting of the letters from Fall 2001 containing anthrax. The investigation into those letters is closed. Compare Barrett v. US, 2010 112259( “The Declaration of David Hardy, Section Chief of the Record/Information Dissemination Section of the FBI) Thus, exemption (b)(7) has no application.
Based on the FBI files at the FBI's FOIA Reading Room, notice can be taken that both USAMRIID scientist Bruce Ivins and lead hijacker Mohammed Atta are dead and thus exemption (b)(6) has no application.
I am not asking that any documents not already in existence be created. Bartlett v. US, 867 F. Supp. 314 (E.D. Pa. 1994) (handwriting analysis must already exist and the FBI need not create such a record under FOIA).
Please search the FBI’s indices to the Central Records System for the information responsive to this request including but not limited to those related to: Bruce Ivins, Mohammed Atta, Amerithrax, anthrax, Questioned Documents Unit, handwriting comparisons, Kenneth Kohl (DOJ), Rachel Lieber (DOJ), Richard Lambert (FB), Edward Montooth (FBI), and Jason Bannan (FBI).
Please inform me if there will be any estimated fees before processing my request. I intend to upload the documents immediately to the "Case Closed" blog and amerithrax blogs that have several hundred thousand views and are forums where source documents are uploaded.
Bruce Ivins' handwriting does not look anything like the letters containing the anthrax that was mailed and the Al Qaeda anthrax threat is continuing. Thus, I would ask that the request be expedited.
***
Thank you for your consideration,
Anonymous,
DeleteI think everyone understands that you do not believe the FBI's case against Bruce Ivins and you are therefore doing your own independent investigation.
That has NOTHING to do with me. As stated before, I'm just analyzing the available information in order to understand what was going on.
There was nothing in anything I read that indicated that the experts had an explanation for the difference in the size of the first mailing handwriting and the second mailing handwriting, the difference in the way certain characters of the alphabet were drawn in the first mailing versus the second mailing (and the Brokaw letter versus the Brokaw envelope) or the omission of punctuation in the first letter and the use of punctuation in the second letter.
I've done FOIA requests to get photos to clarify my understanding of what things looked like, but I have no reason to submit FOIA requests just to look for possible discrepancies or overlooked evidence. That is for amateur detectives like yourself.
Ed
Anonymous,
DeleteTo put it another way. You and other "Truthers" are doing doing investigative work to try to convince people that your beliefs are more accurate than the FBI/DOJ's findings.
Anything I might do along those lines would be redundant and a waste of time.
All I'm doing is trying to UNDERSTAND the case as explained by the FBI and DOJ and to further explain it to my readers. If I find there is missing information - such as the unexplained reason for the change in the size of the handwriting, etc. - I put the known pieces together and formulate an hypothesis to fill in the missing piece. And, I ask everyone who reads my web site to provide additional information to prove or disprove my hypothesis.
I'm looking at facts and what they mean. You are looking for ways to justify your beliefs. So, what you are doing has nothing to do with what I am doing. If you think I should be doing things your way, you just don't understand the situation.
Ed
As I've explained, Mara Linscott's testimony DESTROYS an Ivins Theory because it explains that the work with the animals on nights and weekends was a one-person job and would take a couple of hours. But as to any comment about letters she had received from Ivins a half decade earlier, Rule 701 of the Federal Rules of Evidence cannot be understood without understanding Rule 702. And you clearly do not understand Rule 702.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous wrote: "As I've explained, Mara Linscott's testimony DESTROYS an Ivins Theory because it explains that the work with the animals on nights and weekends was a one-person job and would take a couple of hours."
DeleteThat is your BELIEF, which appears to have little to do with what Ivins was doing during his UNEXPLAINED hours in his lab at night and on weekends. If you think it does, why didn't IVINS think so, too? He couldn't explain what he was doing - other than to say he was just getting away from his family life or hiding from some annoying security guard.
Ed
Ed, he did think so. His lawyer and counsel explained that at meetings with the AUSA. See filmed explanation by Attorney Paul Kemp available on YouTube.
DeleteAnonymous,
DeleteI'm talking facts and your talking about unsubstantiated claims. Once again, you need to provide quotes and links. Otherwise, I'm just going to assume that you are doing as you almost always do: interpreting irrelevant materials as being relevant.
Ed
Pursuant to Rule 104 of the Federal Rules of Evidence, a district court shall determine preliminary questions regarding the admissibility of evidence. Rule 702 specifically governs the admission of expert testimony, and provides that "if scientific, technical or other specialized knowledge will assist the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue a witness qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education may testify thereto in the form of an opinion or otherwise." Federal Rule of Evidence 702. In Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579, 113 S.Ct. 2786, 125 L.Ed.2d 469 (1993), the Supreme Court made clear that the critical concerns of Rule 702 are the evidentiary reliability and relevancy of the scientific evidence. Daubert, 509 U.S. at 592, 113 S.Ct. at 2795. The Daubert Court established a two-pronged test which requires a district court to determine "whether the expert is proposing to testify to 1) scientific knowledge that 2) will assist the trier of fact to understand or determine a fact in issue." prior to admitting the evidence. Daubert, 509 U.S. at 592, 113 S.Ct. at 2796. The district court's determination "entails a preliminary assessment of whether the reasoning or methodology underlying the testimony is scientifically valid and of whether that reasoning or methodology can be properly applied to the facts in issue" Id.
ReplyDeleteUnder the reliability prong of this analysis, a court should assess whether the reasoning or methodology underlying the expert's theory or technique utilizes valid scientific methods and procedures without deciding upon the correctness of the experts conclusions. Joiner v. General Electric Company, 78 F.3d 524, 530 (11th Cir. 1996). The Daubert Court offered several non-exclusive factors to guide federal courts in evaluating whether the particular scientific testimony is reliable. Such factors include: 1) whether the expert's theory or technique has been or can be tested; 2) whether the theory or technique on which the expert's opinion is based has been subjected to peer review or publication: 3) whether the particular scientific technique has a known or potential rate of error and what standards exist to control the technique's operation; and 4) whether the technique is generally accepted in the scientific community. Daubert, 509 at 593-94, 113 S.Ct. at 2796-97. These factors are not exhaustive or applicable to every case but serve as the basis for assessing the reliability of the expert's opinion. Joiner, 78 F.3d at 530.
Anonymous wrote: "Rule 702 specifically governs the admission of expert testimony"
DeleteWho's discussing "expert testimony"? If you cannot understand what the subject of this discussion is, I'm going to have to start deleting your irrelevant posts.
The discussion is about a LAY WITNESS and what she told the FBI about Ivins' handwriting.
Ed
Secondly, the district court must determine whether the expert opinion is relevant, in that it sufficiently relates to the facts in issue so that it will assist the trier of fact in resolving the factual disputes. Daubert, 509 U.S. at 591, 113 S.Ct. at 2795-96; Joiner, 78 F.3d at 530. In this regard, Rule 702 requires a valid scientific connection to the pertinent inquiry as a precondition to admissibility. Daubert, 509 U.S at 592, 113 S.Ct. at 2796.
ReplyDeleteThere has been some question as to whether the Daubert standards would apply only to scientific expert testimony or whether it can be expanded technical or specialized knowledge. See, Iacobelli Construction Inc. v. County of Munroe, 32 F.3d 19 (2nd Cir. 1994); Tamarin V. Adam Caterers, Inc., 13 F.3d 51 (C.A. 1993). However, when considering the issue of handwriting analysis the circuits have determined that it would use the Daubert standard to evaluate the admission of the testimony. See, e.g., United States v. Velasquez, 64 F.3d 844 (3rd Cir. 1995). Thus, this court should follow the lead of the Third Circuit and hold a hearing to determine whether the Government expert's testimony on the analysis of the handwriting at issue in this case is admissible under the Daubert standard. (1)
The Eleventh Circuit interpreted Daubert in the Joiner opinion. (2) The Court found that in analyzing the admissibility of an expert's opinion the district court plays the role of gatekeeper. Joiner, 78 F.3d at 530. The district court is required to assure that an expert's opinions are based on relevant scientific methods, processes and data and not on mere speculation and the court must then make a determination that the methods, processes and opinions apply to the facts at issue. Id. The Circuit Court has also found that Daubert applies not only to the opinions of the expert but also to the admission of the results of any specialized technical equipment used in the case. United State v. Lee, 25 F.3d 997, 998-999 (11th Cir. 1994). The Eleventh Circuit encourages the district court to make specific fact findings concerning the application of Rule 702 and Daubert to assist in appellate review. Lee, 25 F.3d at 999.
In evaluating the opinion of the Government's handwriting expert, under the first prong of Daubert, the district court must identify the basis of the expert's opinion and ascertain whether the methods, procedures and information used by the expert to reach his or her conclusion was scientifically reliable. Joiner, 78 F.3d at 530-531. This requires the district court to examine such factors as the expert's background, what literature was examined, the expert's familiarity with the facts of the case, what studies were conducted by the expert and what the scientific reliability of those studies was.Joiner, 78 F.3d at 530-533. Thus far no discovery or evidence has been received which would show that a person can learn to expertly compare exemplars with questioned writings. Neither has there been any evidence to show that such an experts conclusion is sufficiently accurate and reflects such a low rate of error that it can be useful rather than misleading to the fact finder. The handwriting analysis in this case is especially troublesome because not only is it inherently not scientifically reliable it was also done specifically for this litigation. In addition, the opinions offered by the expert are conclusory.
With regards to the second prong of the analysis, the district court is required to determine whether the testimony would assist the jury by examining whether the reasoning and methodology which underlies the testimony can be applied to the facts which are at issue. Joiner, 78 F.3d at 533. Because the reasoning and the methodology underlying the handwriting analysis in this case is inherently flawed, the expert's opinion cannot be applied to the facts at issue. Thus, the testimony would not be beneficial to the jury and as such should be excluded from this case.
Irrelevant. The subject is the observations by a LAY WITNESS, not an "expert witness."
DeleteEd
I'm going to switch topics at tad, as in looking for something else I came upon this message board site thread:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.forumsforjustice.org/forums/showthread.php?t=6404
In it, the author, one Cherokee, does BOTH forensic linguistic and handwriting analysis (via side-by-side comparison) in the JonBenet
Ramsey Case.
It's a tour de force, never seen anything so thorough centering on one case.
And it goes on for the 3 pages of the thread.
Don't know who Cherokee is, but he knows his stuff!
(on the last page he cites the judgements of other examiners who think Patsy Ramsey wrote the letter).
Ed, for the same reason, YOU are not qualified to address the issue. Such an approach involves the situation where anyone with a keyboard sits down and argues for 10 years that a First Grader wrote the Fall 2001 anthrax letters.
ReplyDeleteThere is a real question regarding the scientific reliability of handwriting analysis especially where a witness purports to link a defendant to the evidence by virtue of comparison evidence. If a court is going to allow a witness to testify, it must first establish that the expert is able to do what he claims and that the techniques used by the experts are scientifically reliable. That is that the methods used have been empirically tested, subjected to peer review, that the error rate has been tested and also that the methods used by the expert are generally accepted in the scientific community. In addition, the Government must show that the witness' opinion is relevant to assist the trier of fact. The Government will be unable to show that the witness' opinion and analysis will be able to meet these standards and thus, the testimony is excluded.
Anonymous wrote: "If a court is going to allow a witness to testify, it must first establish that the expert is able to do what he claims..."
DeleteOnce again you post irrelevant crap and fail to understand that the subject is the testimony of a LAY WITNESS, not the testimony of an "expert witness."
Ed
Once again, Ed, the issue comes down to an issue of reading comprehension. If you read Rule 701 regarding what subjects a lay witness is allowed to given his opinion on, you will see that matters of specialized knowledge deemed the realm of expert witnesses are excluded. A non-expert is not going to be heard to make such a comparison. See, e.g., Wolf v. Ramsey, 253 F. Supp. 2d 1323 (self-proclaimed handwriting expert was not qualified to provide reliable handwriting analysis where expert had never completed an accreditation course or been apprentice to a certified document examiner); Dracz v. American General Life Ins., , 426 F. Supp. 2d 1373, aff'd 201 F.d Appx 681 (where not certified by professional organization and trained by individual whose qualifications were suspect, individual was not qualified to render expert opinion in the field of handwriting analysis); Accord: A.V. By Versace, Inc. v. Gani Versace, 446 F. Supp. 252; American General Life and Acc. Ins. Co. v. Ward, 530 F.Supp. 2d 1306; E.E.O.C. v. Ethan Allen, Inc., 259 F. Supp. 2d 625 (N.D. Ohio 2003).
DeleteOnce again, Anonymous, the issue comes down to an issue of reading comprehension.
DeleteThe lay witness would not be giving any opinion based upon "specialized knowledge." A lay witness would only be talking about what she saw and thought. That does NOT require specialized knowledge.
Try reading this to see if you can understand it:
USCS Fed Rules Evid R 701 provides that a witness may testify in the form of opinion if the opinion is rationally based on the perception of the witness and helpful in understanding his/her testimony or in determining a fact in issue. Lay witness opinion is admissible so long as it would be helpful to the factfinder and is rationally based on personal perception. This rule recognizes that a lay witness' opinion can more helpful at times than the raw data on which the opinion is based. An opinion is often a convenient shorthand device. For example, testimony that a person was "excited" or "angry" is more evocative and understandable than a long, physical description of the person's outward manifestations."
A lay witness can give testimony about handwriting and what she personally thought regarding the handwriting, but she cannot give testimony about what it means experts in the field or to the rule of law.
The lay witness is NOT making a comparison for the court, she is stating what she observed. Period.
The differences really shouldn't be so difficult for you to understand. But, as you say, it's a matter of reading comprehension, not of just copying and pasting words.
Ed
See, e.g., United States v. Jones, 107 F.3d 1147 (6th Cir. 1997) (no abuse of discretion in admitting the testimony of a handwriting examiner who had years of practical experience and extensive training, and who explained his methodology in detail)
ReplyDeleteAnonymous wrote: "the testimony of a handwriting examiner who had years of practical experience"
DeleteMore irrelevant crap -- the last I'll allow. I'll be deleting any further posts about "expert witnesses" where there is no actual discussion about "expert witnesses."
Ed
R. Rowley wrote: "I'm going to switch topics at tad .."
ReplyDeleteYour switching topics to something that is of no interest to me, and I have some research to do, so maybe "Anonymous" will discuss this with you.
Ed
R. Rowley wrote: "I asked for politicians who wanted to shut down the vaccine program, and you supply SPECULATION.
ReplyDeleteIt wasn't "speculation," it was a media report that didn't name its sources.
Doing some research, I find it was Senator Daschle who was specifically giving Ivins grief. Less so with Senator Leahy.
The Expert Behavioral Analysis Report says on page 8:
In June 2001, Senator Daschle, the Senate majority leader, sent a letter to the Department of Defense that heightened concerns about the safety of the vaccine. Also in June, the Department of Defense announced it was curtailing its vaccination program — the vaccine was beginning to run out.
As his own emails show, Dr. Ivins became concerned that his vaccine program was in jeopardy. On September 7, 2001, he wrote that he had just received his own anthrax vaccine injection but that supplies were dwindling “and when it’s gone, there’s nothing to replace it with. I don’t know what will happen to the research programs and hot suite work until we get a new lot. ... Everything is in limbo.”
I could do further research into his emails, but the above should be sufficient to show that it was not speculation that Ivins had a reason to target Senator Daschle specifically.
Ed
R. Rowley wrote: "I asked for politicians who wanted to shut down the vaccine program, and you supply SPECULATION.
DeleteIt wasn't "speculation," it was a media report that didn't name its sources.
=========================================
From a juridical point of view, that's speculation.
After all, Nicholas Kristof and others were criticising the Task Force early on for not arresting Hatfield right away, based on what? Nothing substantial. I'm willing to bet that the Kristof of late 2001/early 2002 would have claimed he was going on 'unnamed sources' but many times 'unnamed sources'=rumors.
Many 'media reports' don't pan out because of that. And if you've forgotten the early months/years of Amerithrax, then just look at the (frequently) erroneous reports in the media on the Boston Marathon bombings, those just last month.
Way up the thread:
Delete---------------
"Anonymous" also wrote: "The FBI's handwriting analysis should be disclosed"
Which handwriting analysis?
=============================================
Why all of them, of course! What would be the logical or juridical basis for only disclosing a fraction of them?
And while I'm on about that, it cannot be excluded that 10, 15, 20 or even more persons who were familiar with Ivins' printing were asked by investigators whether they noted similarities between Ivins' printing and the printing of the Amerithrax texts. So, WHAT IF: 10 persons were asked and of those 10 persons:
a)4 answered that they saw not the slightest resemblance
b) 4 answered that they had no opinion one way or the other on any (potential) resemblances
c) 2 (the figure cited in the FINAL REPORT)said they saw resemblances.
?
The write-up of the printing analysis would likely be the same, because there's no effort to be either comprehensive* or fair in the FINAL REPORT. This is an effort to close the case by blaming Ivins.
Only a comprehensive review of raw files would reveals such
a (posited) spread of opinion.
*see the ignored rabbit trials
R. Rowley wrote: Why all of them, of course! What would be the logical or juridical basis for only disclosing a fraction of them?"
DeleteBut if the prosecution has one "handwriting expert" who says that the handwriting looks like the natural handwriting of the person who wrote the letters, but does not look like Bruce Ivins's handwriting, and the prosecution has another expert who says that he handwriting looks disguised and appears to be the disguised handwriting of Bruce Ivins, what should the prosecution do?
Why bring either expert into court? They prove NOTHING about the case. The purpose of a trial is to to decide an issue. If no two experts agree, they do not help decide an issue, and it would just be a waste of time to put them on the stand.
Of course, if the prosecution puts a "handwriting expert" on the stand to testify that that the handwriting on the slant labels is a perfect match for Ivins' handwriting, the defense can put Ivins on the stand to claim he didn't write the labels, or the defense can find their own "handwriting expert" to testify that the handwriting may not be Ivins' handwriting but someone trying to imitate Ivins' handwriting.
Ed
R. Rowley wrote: "From a juridical point of view, that's speculation."
DeleteOnly because you're ignoring the fact that Senator Daschle DID write a letter criticizing the anthrax vaccine program.
And you're ignoring the fact that (according to official documents) Ivins wrote emails expressing concern that the vaccine program was going to be shut down.
So, in this instance, the FACTS say that what the media wrote was correct.
Ed
R. Rowley wrote: "From a juridical point of view, that's speculation."
DeleteOnly because you're ignoring the fact that Senator Daschle DID write a letter criticizing the anthrax vaccine program.
=================================================
No, you misunderstand. So Daschle wrote such a letter.
That's not speculation.
Does that in itself:
1)establish that Ivins read the letter or read ABOUT the letter?
No.
2)prove that Ivins was upset at Daschle in particular?
No.
3)prove that Ivins expressed this PERSONAL upset with Daschle to anyone?
No.
[you need 1) 2) and 3) to have evidence that Ivins had a particular animus toward Daschle]
So, once again, what is speculation are the news reports which suggest that this subject made Ivins angry with Daschle IN PARTICULAR.(for only the particular upset with Daschle/Leahy would even potentially explain why they were addressees)
Back to Mister Lake:
---------------------------
And you're ignoring the fact that (according to official documents) Ivins wrote emails expressing concern that the vaccine program was going to be shut down.
====================================================
Of course, he would be upset. But that doesn't establish that he blamed any particular persons.
R. Rowley wrote: "Does that in itself:
Delete1)establish that Ivins read the letter or read ABOUT the letter?
No.
2)prove that Ivins was upset at Daschle in particular?
No."
Once again you are saying - and this time VERY clearly - that evidence isn't really evidence unless by itself it proves something.
How many times are you going to make such a claim and then deny you made such a claim?
R. Rowley also wrote: "But that doesn't establish that he blamed any particular persons."
It doesn't have to. That is just another claim by you that evidence isn't really evidence unless it proves something by itself. Or are you now going to deny saying that?
All the evidence put together proves beyond any reasonable doubt that Bruce Ivins was the anthrax killer.
Ed
R. Rowley wrote: Why all of them, of course! What would be the logical or juridical basis for only disclosing a fraction of them?"
DeleteBut if the prosecution has one "handwriting expert" who says that the handwriting looks like the natural handwriting of the person who wrote the letters, but does not look like Bruce Ivins's handwriting, and the prosecution has another expert who says that he handwriting looks disguised and appears to be the disguised handwriting of Bruce Ivins, what should the prosecution do?
================================================
I'm not talking courtroom strategy, I'm talking what a full public airing of the case BOTH for and against Bruce Ivins as the anthrax killer would bring out. And any full public airing that included the comparative handwriting analysis would include each and every PROFESSIONAL OPINION on that point.
As to the notional trial itself, my understanding(?) is that if the prosecution
announced its intention to call ONE handwriting expert, the rules of discovery would require them to either spontaneously or on request provide to the defense the evaluations of ALL such experts, including those who contradicted the expert they intended to call.
THEN (if I am correct in the above paragraph) it would be up to the prosecutors to select:
1) going ahead with the battling experts on the handwriting evaluation, especially self-wounding because they would be the prosecution's OWN battling witnesses.
or
2) dropping that skein of evidence entirely, unless the defense brought it up in the defense-in-main.
It seems to me that 2) would be preferable, since 'battling experts' tend to bore jurors and call attention to the uncertainty of the whole prosecutorial enterprise.
But I'm not lawyer.
R. Rowley wrote: "Does that in itself:
Delete1)establish that Ivins read the letter or read ABOUT the letter?
No.
2)prove that Ivins was upset at Daschle in particular?
No."
Once again you are saying - and this time VERY clearly - that evidence isn't really evidence unless by itself it proves something.
===============================================
Not at all. I SPECIFICALLY AND EXPLICITLY stated (above):
1) to establish that Ivins was motivated to send anthrax to Daschle and Leahy
it does not suffice to establish that Daschle wrote some letter about cutting funding for either the existing vaccine or for research on a subsequent anthrax vaccine
because Ivins:
a) might not have known about the letter (nothing you have written here establishes that he did know about the letter). Without it, this is no motive.
b) might not have made too much of the letter, since government spending on DoD (and other departments) goes through a lot of back-and-forth emails/letters, and probably in the final analysis concrete decisions about whatever is cut at USAMRIID would be made at the DoD level (or even the USAMRIID internal level).
c) might not have expressed any animus toward Daschle/Leahy (for it is in the EXPRESSION of the animus that we obtain evidence that it exists).
So, FAR from denying that Daschle's letter COULD HAVE supplied a motive,
I ask for evidence that it did: (my a,b,c points in the previous post by me).
And in my a,b,c points here I ask not that the Daschle letter stand on its own two feet but that it connect to statements made by Ivins about Daschle/Leahy. That was never even alleged.
Trials are about evidence. In the motive area the Task Force/DoJ has provided none. It's just the same old mind-reading game.
Back to Mister Lake:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
R. Rowley also wrote: "But that doesn't establish that he blamed any particular persons." It doesn't have to.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yes, it does. We are talking about particular persons being the addressees of the Amerithrax letters and any grappling with motives dealing with why those particular persons were chosen has to make some sort of logical sense. Entirely absent here unless you provide evidence of the perp holding Daschle and Leahy responsible for something or other. That hasn't been done.
R. Rowley wrote: "I'm not talking courtroom strategy, I'm talking what a full public airing of the case BOTH for and against Bruce Ivins as the anthrax killer would bring out. And any full public airing that included the comparative handwriting analysis would include each and every PROFESSIONAL OPINION on that point."
DeleteIn other words, you're changing the argument because you cannot defend your previous argument. The mumbo jumbo at the end of your comment seems to agree with my argument that the prosecution would NOT present ANY expert witness on the subject of handwriting if there was no agreement among their handwriting experts.
A "full public airing" of the case for and against Bruce Ivins is not the job of the Department of Justice. The DOJ would only present the case against Bruce Ivins. Ivins' lawyer hasn't presented any case in defense of Bruce Ivins, nor has anyone else. They've just said that they believe that Ivins was innocent and they believe that the case against Ivins was not sufficient to convict.
Unfortunately, there is no real mechanism for putting a dead person on trial. Maybe the GAO will shed some additional light on the subject, but the FACTS say that Bruce Ivins was the anthrax mailer, so all the GAO can do is explain some of the facts in greater detail or fill in some blanks. I suppose it's possible that they might include some OPINIONS from Ivins' friends and associates who BELIEVE that Ivins was innocent, but I don't see any purpose to doing that other than to make it clear that some people will believe what they want to believe, regardless of what the facts say.
Ed
R. Rowley wrote: "So, FAR from denying that Daschle's letter COULD HAVE supplied a motive,
DeleteI ask for evidence that it did:"
You are in a fantasy world. Motives are entirely within a person's mind, and IT IS NOT NECESSARY TO PROVE A MOTIVE IN A CRIMINAL CASE. So, the best that can be done is to try to figure out what was most likely going on inside Ivins' mind when he sent the letters. Even if Ivins had written down his motives, there would be no way of knowing if they were his true motives or not.
I wrote in another message in this thread:
-----------------
The Expert Behavioral Analysis Report says on page 8:
In June 2001, Senator Daschle, the Senate majority leader, sent a letter to the Department of Defense that heightened concerns about the safety of the vaccine. Also in June, the Department of Defense announced it was curtailing its vaccination program — the vaccine was beginning to run out.
As his own emails show, Dr. Ivins became concerned that his vaccine program was in jeopardy. On September 7, 2001, he wrote that he had just received his own anthrax vaccine injection but that supplies were dwindling “and when it’s gone, there’s nothing to replace it with. I don’t know what will happen to the research programs and hot suite work until we get a new lot. ... Everything is in limbo.”
------------------
Checking further, I found a Hartford Courant article which says,
A few months before he was targeted in the deadly 2001 anthrax attacks, then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle sent a letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld questioning whether the anthrax vaccine the military was giving soldiers was unsafe and should be discontinued.
....
The suspected killer, Bruce Ivins, was one of the Army's lead scientists on the anthrax vaccine and was angered by suggestions that it made recipients ill, NBC reported.
Investigators also are expected to allege that Ivins may have mailed anthrax to generate renewed interest in saving the vaccine and in encouraging the military to spend more money developing a new vaccine - one that he helped produce and may have stood to profit from.
Yes, I know this isn't proof of motive. But, in court you do not have to prove motive. You don't even have to mention motive. But, you can suggest to the jury what the defendant's motives might have been to make it clear to the jury that it didn't have to be a motiveless crime.
The Courant article also says,
The letter, also signed by then House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt, was sent to Rumsfeld on June 21, 2001.
That letter was apparently at one time at a link in the Courant article, but I can't find it at the moment.
And, Ivins' emails reacting to the letter aren't in his USAMRIID files. So, they must have been personal emails. They're probably around somewhere on the Net, but I'm not sure where.
There doesn't seem to be much point in hunting for them if we can't agree on what the issue is that is being debated. If issue is a claim that the letter and the emails don't exist, then it would be worthwhile hunting for them. If the issue is that they do not PROVE a motive for Ivins, then hunting for them would be a waste of time, since NOTHING can PROVE A MOTIVE which only existed inside a dead man's mind.
Ed
I'm signing off for today.
ReplyDeleteWhile I'm gone, I suggest that "Anonymous" try to learn the difference between a layman's observations about handwriting and a "handwriting expert's" opinions about what handwriting means as evidence in court.
And I suggest that Mr. Rowley try to understand that he is not the supreme authority on what can be considered as evidence. There are formal rules of evidence and court procedures that determine what is evidence and what is not.
Ed
Ed, this morning I have read all the cases annotated under Rule 701. You are mistaken in your lay assertions. That's why lay opinions on a subject requiring specialized knowledge are deemed unreliable. The chances that a lay witnesses characterization of handwriting she had seen on one or a few occasions a half decade earlier -- especially where the exemplar itself is not admitted -- is as close to zero as you can get. But the inadmissibility aside (due to unreliability), for starters, though, you should like the actual 302 report by the witness. Even though testimony is not admissible, it can serve as the basis of my call to the witness today. The witness does not even think Dr. Ivins is guilty. You are just really uninformed and out of the loop.
DeleteAnonymous wrote: "That's why lay opinions on a subject requiring specialized knowledge are deemed unreliable."
DeleteUnreliable or not, a person can testify in court that she told authorities that the handwriting looked like Ivins' handwriting. The Defense can then address the issue of the reliability of a remembered observation from many years ago.
Eye witnesses are NOTORIOUSLY unreliable. But they still give testimony in court EVERY DAY. Psychologists and experts of other kinds are looking for ways to test or evaluate the reliability of eye witness testimony, but there are no fixed rules, so there is no choice but to allow eye witness testimony in court.
Anonymous also wrote: "The chances that a lay witnesses characterization of handwriting she had seen on one or a few occasions a half decade earlier -- especially where the exemplar itself is not admitted -- is as close to zero as you can get."
But, when the original statement was made years before any actual trial, the statement was recorded by the police. So, the only issue in court is whether the police accurately recorded the statement, NOT whether the person still remembers everything years later.
Anonymous wrote: " The witness does not even think Dr. Ivins is guilty."
A JURY decides whether Ivins was guilt or not. As a lawyer, you should understand that. You cannot possibly be so uniformed and "out of the loop" that you believe that what a witness says she BELIEVES about a person's guilt overrides what a JURY says about a person's guilt.
The same goes for Ivins' lawyer. He may CLAIM that Ivins was innocent, because that's his job. However, it would be A JURY that would decide if the EVIDENCE says Ivins was guilty or not.
Ed
And I suggest that Mr. Rowley try to understand that he is not the supreme authority on what can be considered as evidence'
ReplyDelete------------------------------------------------
That would be a VERY good suggestion, if it weren't for the fact that I'm the one--------NOT Mister Lake------who went off looking for a definition (not my own)of what a "eye witness" was in the technical/legal sense, which I did by copy and pasting from this link: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/eyewitness
(in case you missed it that was my post of
May 15, 2013 at 2:00 PM ), so as to elucidate whether ANYONE not at the time/place of the Amerithrax printings would actually be an 'eyewitness' to same (they would not be).
In fact that PROMPTED Mister Lake (in the very next post this thread) to go to Wikipedia in an effort to extricate himself from
this particular situation. But it didn't work because the definition he copy and pasted (partial from that):
-----------------
Eyewitness testimony is the account a bystander gives in the courtroom, describing what they perceived happened during the specific incident under investigation.
--------------
doesn't fit, because neither Mara Linscott nor anyone else who ever saw Ivins' handprinting could be described as a "bystander" in either the casual or legal meanings of the word.
But, as ever, Mister Lake was oblivious to that: he goes seeking definitions and then ignores their clear implications, shoe-horning his own (mis)understandings into them, but ALWAYS with the same end in mind: to give the (notional) prosecutors of Ivins maximal leeway in presenting material, even if he has to ignore or distort due process to do it.
-----
Subsequently, on the thread (post: May 16, 2013 at 8:26 AM
I copy and pasted this:
------------------
HANDWRITING COMPARISON - Usually requires some special training and experience in handwriting analysis, and in addition, a familiarity with the handwriting of the individual in question. Most courts allow the expert "a high level of belief" rather than absolute certainty, and a sample size of 10 points of comparison is becoming standard.
http://faculty.ncwc.edu/mstevens/425/lecture01.htm
=================================================
Once again, if I WERE claiming to be "the supreme authority" on the subject matter, why would I go off looking for the best on-line authority I could find? I wouldn't and this is an elementary matter of logic.
That was followed by my post(May 16, 2013 at 7:16 AM)
of yesterday's copy and paste/link:
----------------------------------------------------
Fact Witness Law & Legal Definition
A fact witness is a person with knowledge about what happened in a particular case, who testifies in the case about what happened or what the facts are. Fact witness testimony consists of the recitation of facts and/or events as opposed to an expert witness, whose testimony consists of the presentation of an opinion, a diagnosis, etc.
http://definitions.uslegal.com/f/fact-witness/
==========================================================
Once again, I'm willing to be wrong. But if I were wrong, then Mister Lake would be able to provide an example of a non-expert witness giving testimony about a technical field in his testimony. So far, Mister Lake has not done that, either from true-case history or even from the TV courtroom melodramas which form so much of our (layman's) consciousness about courtroom procedures, rules etc.
R. Rowley wrote: "That would be a VERY good suggestion, if it weren't for the fact that I'm the one--------NOT Mister Lake------who went off looking for a definition (not my own)of what a "eye witness" was in the technical/legal sense"
ReplyDeleteYes, you found the shortest and most misleading definition for "eyewitness" you could find.
There are three kinds of witnesses who testify in court: (1) expert witnesses, (2) character witnesses, and (3) eye witnesses.
HOWEVER, there's a problem with semantics here. All three are "witnesses" although the first two actually "witnessed" nothing. And the third isn't necessarily an "eye witness" to a crime. The third can just be a witness to some thing or event that can shed light on who committed the crime.
The proper term would be "witness" because she is taking the witness stand to testify about something relevant to the case. But that term doesn't distinguish between the other two kinds of witnesses. So, she's an "eye witness" who wasn't actually an eye witness to the crime. She's just a witness who saw or heard something relevant to the case.
R. Rowley also wrote: "Once again, I'm willing to be wrong. But if I were wrong, then Mister Lake would be able to provide an example of a non-expert witness giving testimony about a technical field in his testimony."
I could probably think of a thousand examples, but you'll just say they are not the same thing. Here's a few:
If a witness says that a street light was red at the scene of an accident, that witness does not have to be an expert in the workings of streetlights or an expert on traffic control.
If a witness was handed a twenty dollar bill and it didn't feel like a real twenty dollar bill, she does not have to be a treasury agent or an expert on money manufacturing to testify in court why she called the police.
If a witness says she heard a noise and looked out the window to see a dark shape run across her lawn, that witness does not have to be an expert on optical illusions or sound analysis.
If a witness saw John Smith go into a building with Joe Brown and saw only John Smith come back out, that witness does not have to be an expert on architecture or the construction of the building in question.
If a witness told the FBI that Ivins' handwriting on some notes he'd sent her years ago looked like the handwriting on the anthrax letters, she does NOT have to be a handwriting expert to state in court what she saw and thought.
Here's a repeat of an earlier comment of mine:
A lay witness can give testimony about handwriting and what she personally thought regarding the handwriting, but she cannot give testimony about what it means to experts in the field or to the rule of law.
The lay witness is NOT making a comparison for the court, she is stating what she observed.
That is THE LAW. That is how "LAY witness" testimony is distinguished from "EXPERT witness" testimony. A lay witness tells the court what she saw and what it meant to her, an expert witness tells the court what something MEANS as evidence in a court of law.
Ed
Here's another one that really fits: If a witness says that she noticed the defendant near the crime scene "because he looked just like my Uncle Louie," that would be totally admissible. She wouldn't have to be a recognized "expert witness" on physiognomy.
DeleteEd
Hmm. I've been thinking that it might help this discussion a bit if we could use transcripts from an actual trial to resolve disputes.
ReplyDeleteI just did a search for "trial transcripts" and found an interesting site here: http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/ftrials.htm
I notice, for example, that the OJ Simpson trial began on January 24, 1995 and the verdict was reached on October 3, 1995. So, the trial lasted over 9 months. And, I found these entries:
February 3, 1995 - Nicole Brown's sister Denise testifies about O.J. Simpson's abuse of her sister.
That testimony would be about what a witness observed. The witness probably wasn't an expert on spousal abuse.
March 15, 1995 - Detective Mark Fuhrman, cross-examined by defense attorney F. Lee Bailey, denies using the word "nigger" at any time in the previous ten years.
Examining that testimony might resolve issues about what is relevant in a trial.
July 10, 1995 - The defense calls its first witness, Arnelle Simpson, O.J. Simpson's daughter.
Simpson's daughter wasn't an eye witness to the crime, yet she evidently observed something without being an expert on that subject.
If we could agree on what the issue is we're trying to resolve, there might be some answers in those trial transcripts.
Ed
From the Timothy McVeigh trial, here is some testimony by Lori Fortier at http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/mcveigh/lorifortiertestimony.html
ReplyDeleteQ. Did he describe what land he was looking for?
A. Yes, he did. It was outside the Kingman area, in Seligman,
and he had it outlined on a map that had like possible nuclear
attack zones outlined.
Q. Describe that map for us, please.
A. It was a regular road atlas that had like certain areas
highlighted that wouldn't be like hit if there was a nuclear
attack.
Q. So it reflected the nuclear safe zones?
A. Yes.
Lori Fortier was NOT a cartographer.
Q. Was this a commercially purchased and printed map --
A. Yes.
Q. -- or hand-drawn?
A. It was hand-drawn. The highlighting was hand-drawn, but it
was a commercial-like atlas.
Q. And in what form was the highlighting?
A. It was in like -- it was circles of certain areas.
Q. And the circles represented what?
A. The like areas that would be hit by a nuclear attack.
Again, Lori Fortier is not a cartographer.
Q. Do you recall your next contact with McVeigh?
A. Yes, I do.
Q. When was it?
A. In approximately December of '92 or early '93.
Q. What was the contact?
A. Tim sent Michael two books.
Q. Do you recall the books?
A. Yes, I do. One was called Detaxing America and the other
one was called Kingdom of Moltz.
Q. M-O-L-T-Z. T-Z-E, Moltz?
A. I'm not sure.
Q. Did you read either of those?
A. No, I did not.
Q. What was the form of the book?
A. They were photocopied books.
Q. These were not hardback or bound volumes?
A. No, they were not.
Lori Fortier was NOT a professional book binder or book printer.
Q. Where did he rent a house?
A. It was a block house out in Golden Valley, about 10 miles
outside of Kingman.
Q. Which direction from Kingman is Golden Valley?
A. South, I believe.
Q. Is that a smaller community, small city? What is that?
A. Yeah, it's like a suburb of Kingman.
Q. And you referred to a block house. What's a block house?
A. Like a concrete-block house.
Lori Fortier is NOT an architect.
I could go on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on.
Ed
Nuts! I missed a really good one right at the beginning of Lori Fortier's testimony:
DeleteQ. And I don't want you to give us a geography lesson, but can you describe the surroundings and the nearby large cities?
A. It's in the northwest corner of Arizona, approximately a hundred miles from Vegas.
Q. That's Las Vegas in Nevada?
A. Yes.
Q. So Las Vegas is across the border. Are there any other state borders nearby?
A. California is close by.
Q. What's the terrain in that area?
A. Desert with some mountains.
Lori Fortier is not an "expert witness" on cartography OR land management.
Ed
The examples get better and better. Here's one where the witness is asked about a FAKE DRIVER'S LICENSE
DeleteQ. Again, during this two-and-a-half-month period that McVeigh was staying in the Kingman area, did you ever loan him anything?
A. Yes, I did.
Q. Just tell us in your own words what you loaned him, what the circumstances were, what he said to you, where you were.
A. I was at the house, and he came and asked if he could use the typewriter; and I let him take it for a couple days.
Q. Go ahead.
A. He brought it back a few days after that; and when he brought it back, he asked if he could use the iron, because he had something to laminate.
And I told him no because I didn't want him to ruin our iron.
So I took what it was that he had and I laminated it for him.
Q. What was it?
A. It was a false driver's license.
Q. Describe it, please.
A. It was white. It had like a blue strip across the top, and Tim had put his picture on there. And it was like the false name of Robert Kling. I believe it was a North Dakota license.
Q. When you say it was a false name of Robert Kling, how is it you remember that name?
A. Because I looked at it.
According to the theories of R. Rowley and Anonymous, wouldn't the judge require that Lori Fortier be an accredited forensic examiner of forged documents before she could testify that she saw a forged document?
Ed
From the Timothy McVeigh trial, here is some testimony by Lori Fortier at http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/mcveigh/lorifortiertestimony.html
DeleteQ. Did he describe what land he was looking for?
A. Yes, he did. It was outside the Kingman area, in Seligman,
and he had it outlined on a map that had like possible nuclear
attack zones outlined.
Q. Describe that map for us, please.
A. It was a regular road atlas that had like certain areas
highlighted that wouldn't be like hit if there was a nuclear
attack.
Q. So it reflected the nuclear safe zones?
A. Yes.
===================================================
As I understand it, Lori Fortier is describing a CONVERSATION she had with
McVeigh.(one that has no analogue in efforts by anyone in Amerithrax to match up MEMORIES of the appearance of this or that printing by Ivins with the appearance of the printings of Amerithrax; it is the matching up of those writings
separated by years, which constitutes the impermissible testimony, both because the witness lacks the background and because the comparison is not side-by-side)
===================================================
Q. Do you recall your next contact with McVeigh?
A. Yes, I do.
Q. When was it?
A. In approximately December of '92 or early '93.
Q. What was the contact?
A. Tim sent Michael two books.
Q. Do you recall the books?
A. Yes, I do. One was called Detaxing America and the other
one was called Kingdom of Moltz.
Q. M-O-L-T-Z. T-Z-E, Moltz?
A. I'm not sure.
Q. Did you read either of those?
A. No, I did not.
Q. What was the form of the book?
A. They were photocopied books.
Q. These were not hardback or bound volumes?
A. No, they were not.
Lori Fortier was NOT a professional book binder or book printer.
==============================================
The questions had NOTHING to do with the type of binding, they had nothing to do with the type of printing the books contained. The answers simply described the book in general terms. This just establishes that Mister Lake cannot personally distinguish between casual descriptions of things and highly technical INTERPRETATIONS of writings, despite all my best efforts to bring on-line sources to bear on the issue. Moreover, this testimony's (apparent) purpose is to establish what level of acquaintance the witness (Fortier) had with McVeigh. McVeigh's guilt or innocence did not depend IN ANY WAY on the accuracy of Fortier's description of the physical structure of the books in question (or her knowledge of the topography/geography of the area). That makes it worlds removed from Ivins' printing, since that IN AND OF ITSELF could have provided reasonable doubt in his trial (precisely because the gov't was NOT claiming that a child/accomplice did the printing). Said another way the issue of the Ivins/Amerithrax printing bears directly on questions of guilt or innocence, while, as far as I can see, NONE Of Fortier's testimony presented here has such a bearing. Fortier's characterization of a given house as 'block'/'concrete block' may use the right terminology or may not, but McVeigh's guilt/innocence in no ways turns on the answer, or even on the precision of the description.
And lest Mister Lake continue in this vein, let me add that if witness X saw
the (robbery) getaway vehicle and gave a description of the car's color (despite not having gone to art school!), the car's make and model (despite not being an automotive engineer or even an auto mechanic!), that in no way establishes that laymen can give their opinions in testimony when the subject matter is: art forgery; the possibility that the defendant's vehicle could have driven X number of miles on a cracked axel (or other such major malfunction) in order to commit a crime etc. Those are the preserve of the expert witnesses.
R. Rowley wrote: "Said another way the issue of the Ivins/Amerithrax printing bears directly on questions of guilt or innocence, while, as far as I can see, NONE Of Fortier's testimony presented here has such a bearing."
DeleteYou're distorting and misreading both situations - probably deliberately.
The testimony in the Amerithrax case was that Ivins' handwriting looked to the lay witness to be similar to the writing on the anthrax letters. That is NOT EXPERT TESTIMONY. Therefore, it's only about what the witness thought, not what the handwriting means towards Ivins guilt or innocence.
Expert witnesses testify to what things mean toward guilt or innocence in a court of law.
Lay witnesses testify to what things meant to them. The Amerithrax witness was testifying that the handwriting appeared to her to be like Ivins' disguised handwriting she'd seen on notes he'd driven hundreds of miles to deliver to her doorstep in the middle of the night. He would disguise his handwriting and leave clues which the witness would have to decipher to figure out who sent the note and whatever was with the note. The testimony isn't just about the handwriting. The testimony is about how Ivins played mind games with codes, clues and disguised handwriting in notes that appear to be similar to what the anthrax killer used.
As for Lori Fortier's testimony, you do not know the reason why the prosecutor asked the questions. Therefore, you cannot know whether or HOW it relates to the charges against Timothy McVeigh.
The questions were obviously not just idle chit chat. The questions were asked for specific reasons to give the jury specific information. That information appears to have been to show that Timothy McVeigh and Michael Fortier were planning their crime in great detail, using maps that they marked up with what they planned to do or what damage they could expect to inflict, and they photocopied an anti-government book which goes to show their motive and their anger with the government.
The testimony of "expert witnesses" has NOTHING to do with this kind of testimony.
Ed
Mr. Rowley,
DeleteTo put things another way:
In the theoretical trial of Bruce Ivins that never took place because Ivins committed suicide, the testimony of the lay witness in court would have been that Ivins would DISGUISE HIS HANDWRITING when writing cryptic notes to her.
The testimony of the lay witness in court would have been that the lay witness believed the handwriting on the anthrax envelopes could have been Ivins' disguised handwriting.
The lay witness is testifying to what she saw and believed. She's NOT testifying as an "expert witness" about a scientific handwriting comparison and what it means in a court of law.
And, there was no need to produce any of the actual notes that Ivins sent her.
Lori Fortier testified about what she believed was "a false driver's license." She couldn't even remember what state the license was for. She thought it might have been a North Dakota license.
The driver's license was NOT produced in court.
Since the license was not produced in court, no "expert witness" on forged documents testified that the license was truly forged.
The forged driver's license was evidently used to rent the Ryder truck used to haul the explosives to the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. So, it was a very important item of incriminating evidence which a the time of the trial only existed in the memory of a lay witness.
Ed
R. Rowley wrote: "Said another way the issue of the Ivins/Amerithrax printing bears directly on questions of guilt or innocence, while, as far as I can see, NONE Of Fortier's testimony presented here has such a bearing."
DeleteYou're distorting and misreading both situations - probably deliberately.
==========================================
Gee, that's disheartening. I think it's a new low. Aside from people in the DoJ/Task Force directly involved, I assume ALL outside observers who have weighed in on Amerithrax have been speaking/writing in good faith, or at least what they understand good faith to be: from Nicholas Kristof and Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, to Mister Lake, to Scott Shane, to Leonard Cole, to Robert Graysmith, to David Willman, to Anonymous etc. (the full list would be very long). As I have mentioned more than once, I learn stuff from reading what others think, even (especially?) when I disagree, in whole or in part, with their interpretations. It sharpens my thinking.
=========================================================
Mr. Rowley,
DeleteI think we'd both be better off if we can clarify our disagreements. You have a tendency to go off into discussions about the meanings of words and (in this case) what others think.
All I was saying is that it appears that when you go off into arguments about the meanings of words and phases it seems to be a deliberate way of changing the subject to avoid being shown to be wrong.
Ed
In the theoretical trial of Bruce Ivins that never took place because Ivins committed suicide, the testimony of the lay witness in court would have been that Ivins would DISGUISE HIS HANDWRITING when writing cryptic notes to her.
ReplyDeleteThe testimony of the lay witness in court would have been that the lay witness believed the handwriting on the anthrax envelopes could have been Ivins' disguised handwriting.
======================================================
Okay, I'm confident that your first paragraph could have been admitted in court as testimony, but I'm not sure to what effect: there is nothing INDEPENDENT-of-graphological-opinion to even establish that the Amerithrax printings are "disguised", so it may be that Ivins' disguised printing bears some resemblance to the GENUINE (ie undisguised)* printing of an Amerithrax perp.
As to the second paragraph: I'm uncertain about this and one problem I haven't brought up before is: the concept of the investigator 'leading' the informant/potential witness. It's one thing if a person SPONTANEOUSLY says, on seeing the Amerithrax printing for the first time, 'Yikes, that's my Uncle Harry's printing!' and quite another if, in the course of protracted questions about Uncle Harry's sending of gifts with disguised handwriting, the interrogator then places the Amerithrax texts in front of the informant/potential witness and says 'Does this look anything like your Uncle Harry's disguised handwriting?'.
This would be MUCH more likely to get an affirmative answer, but not necessarily a valid one. Informants can be suggestible, sometimes highly so, and I think that this is just ONE of the reasons courts prefer experts to do these types of comparative analyses.
*This of course is quite independent of your opinion of how the Amerithrax printing was disguised and MY opinion of how the Amerithrax printing was disguised: it has to be established in court, at a bare minimum, that the printing was 'disguised', and a lay opinion on this subject is unlikely to be admissible (ie it would be stricken from the record if tendered, the jury instructed by the judge to "ignore the opinion of the witness regarding whether the printing was disguised".
R. Rowley wrote: I'm not sure to what effect: there is nothing INDEPENDENT-of-graphological-opinion to even establish that the Amerithrax printings are "disguised",
ReplyDeleteAgain, you need to look at the WHOLE picture: (1) All the other facts say that Ivins was the anthrax mailer. (2) The handwriting on the anthrax documents does not appear to be Ivins' NORMAL handwriting. Ergo, (3) the handwriting must have been disguised in some way (including using some trick, such as persuading a child to do the actual writing).
The jury would have been presented with all the evidence that Ivins was the anthrax mailer. How Ivins "disguised" his handwriting doesn't have to be resolved, nor does which route Ivins took to drive to New Jersey to mail the letters.
The prosecution just needs to convince the jury that Ivins was the anthrax mailer, they don't need to answer every question that anyone can think up.
The handwriting was disguised in some way. The jury can accept that.
Ed
"The handwriting was disguised in some way. The jury can accept that."
ReplyDelete======================================================
They SHOULDN'T accept it unless it has been established in the courtroom. That's the whole point.
And how do you establish it in a courtroom? By asking Joe Schmoe who has no background whatsoever in any graphological specialty?
If you do, then what is to stop the defense from calling a host of Joe Schmoes to aver that it's not a disguise but:
1)the printing of a foreigner?
2)the printing of someone with a neurological disorder that makes his printing odd (Parkinson's; cerebral palsy; other conditions)?
(see: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1468-1331.2000.00068.x/full
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1659415/pdf/calwestmed00376-0039.pdf
3)(and yes!) the printing of a child?
(This isn't about whether I believe it, this is about how the jury can determine why the printing is the way it is)
4)someone recovering from a stroke and relearning how to print (and do other things)?
Etc.
R. Rowley wrote: "They SHOULDN'T accept it unless it has been established in the courtroom. That's the whole point."
ReplyDeleteThat's YOUR point based upon your wishes and beliefs.
MY POINT is that it would have been "established in the courtroom" by showing the jury a mountain of evidence that Ivins was the anthrax killer and that he worked alone.
The jury would have been provided with all the known information they needed to make a decision of guilty or not guilty.
They wouldn't need to know if Ivins filled up his gas tank before he left for New Jersey or after he got back.
They wouldn't need to know if Ivins left on his first trip to New Jersey before his family went to bed or after his family went to bed.
They wouldn't need to know if Ivins did his second drive to New Jersey on a Saturday or a Sunday.
They wouldn't need to know if Ivins may have had a flat tire on his way to New Jersey or not.
They wouldn't need to know if Ivins used a ZipLock baggie to carry the letters to New Jersey or if he used a WalMart brand.
They wouldn't need to know what Ivins did with the baggie after he emptied the envelopes into the mailbox.
They wouldn't need to know if Ivins used the Princeton mailbox for both mailings or only for the second mailing.
And,they wouldn't need to know HOW Ivins disguised his handwriting.
The jury only needed to know the facts and evidence which the FBI AND the defense attorney provided that proved either guilt or innocence.
You can fantasize that knowing HOW the "disguised" handwriting was accomplished might somehow prove that everything else is false and that Ivins was actually innocent, but that fantasy has nothing to do with reality. In reality, the DOJ prosecutor presents the evidence they HAVE, because they believe it is ENOUGH to convict. The defense presents what evidence they have that indicates the defendant is or may be innocent. In theory, there might be more information somewhere that would help the jury reach a quicker verdict, but if everyone waited for everything to be absolutely complete, nothing would ever get done.
Ed
From Mister Lake's weekly comment:
ReplyDelete------------------
The first Truther mostly just argues that evidence isn't evidence unless he believes it's evidence[...]
=========================================
You need to reread the thread. I have REPEATEDLY linked and copy and pasted URLs that either define 'eye witness'/'expert witness' or give the distinction between lay and expert witnesses. When you pulled this on me last week -----only then your wording was that I was claiming to be the "supreme authority" on the matter-----I summarized via copy and pastes my comments in the thread up to that point thusly:
---------------------------------------------------------------
That would be a VERY good suggestion, if it weren't for the fact that I'm the one--------NOT Mister Lake------who went off looking for a definition (not my own)of what a "eye witness" was in the technical/legal sense, which I did by copy and pasting from this link: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/eyewitness
(in case you missed it that was my post of
May 15, 2013 at 2:00 PM ), so as to elucidate whether ANYONE not at the time/place of the Amerithrax printings would actually be an 'eyewitness' to same (they would not be).
In fact that PROMPTED Mister Lake (in the very next post this thread) to go to Wikipedia in an effort to extricate himself from
this particular situation. But it didn't work because the definition he copy and pasted (partial from that):
-----------------
Eyewitness testimony is the account a bystander gives in the courtroom, describing what they perceived happened during the specific incident under investigation.
--------------
doesn't fit, because neither Mara Linscott nor anyone else who ever saw Ivins' handprinting could be described as a "bystander" in either the casual or legal meanings of the word.
But, as ever, Mister Lake was oblivious to that: he goes seeking definitions and then ignores their clear implications, shoe-horning his own (mis)understandings into them, but ALWAYS with the same end in mind: to give the (notional) prosecutors of Ivins maximal leeway in presenting material, even if he has to ignore or distort due process to do it.
-----
Subsequently, on the thread (post: May 16, 2013 at 8:26 AM
I copy and pasted this:
------------------
HANDWRITING COMPARISON - Usually requires some special training and experience in handwriting analysis, and in addition, a familiarity with the handwriting of the individual in question. Most courts allow the expert "a high level of belief" rather than absolute certainty, and a sample size of 10 points of comparison is becoming standard.
http://faculty.ncwc.edu/mstevens/425/lecture01.htm
=================================================
Once again, if I WERE claiming to be "the supreme authority" on the subject matter, why would I go off looking for the best on-line authority I could find? I wouldn't and this is an elementary matter of logic.
/////////////////////snip continued in 2nd post/////////////
R. Rowley wrote: "Eyewitness testimony is the account a bystander gives in the courtroom, describing what they perceived happened during the specific incident under investigation."
DeleteThis is an example of an argument over the meaning of words.
I pointed out in my post HERE that there is another relevant meaning for the term "eye witness." It's not just someone who was an "eye witness" to a crime. It's a term that is also evidently used to distinguish between three kinds of witnesses: Character Witnesses, Expert Witnesses and Eye Witnesses.
The witness who would have testified about the handwriting was not an eye witness to the anthrax attacks, but she was also not a "character witness" nor an "expert witness," which technically means she was an "eye witness."
Obviously, a better term would be "lay witness," which doesn't appear to have any defined meaning in court. And, then we get into other terms like "fact witness" and "ordinary witness."
The issue was about what Ivins' co-worker could say in court about Ivins' handwriting.
Arguing over whether she is an "eyewitness," a "lay witness," a "fact witness" or an "ordinary witness" is meaningless. It's only important to know that she was NOT an "expert witness," YET her testimony would be allowed in court, which Mr. Rowley and Anonymous were saying could NOT happen.
R. Rowley also wrote: "Once again, if I WERE claiming to be "the supreme authority" on the subject matter, why would I go off looking for the best on-line authority I could find? I wouldn't and this is an elementary matter of logic."
The question is: Were you looking for the "best on-line authority" or the "authority" who seems to support your argument or a new argument over the meaning of words?
Ed
R. Rowley also wrote: "Once again, if I WERE claiming to be "the supreme authority" on the subject matter, why would I go off looking for the best on-line authority I could find? I wouldn't and this is an elementary matter of logic."
DeleteThe question is: Were you looking for the "best on-line authority" or the "authority" who seems to support your argument or a new argument over the meaning of words?
===================================================
When the question in dispute is whether witness X could (under due process) render an opinion in front of a jury about subject Y in a trial, determining whether witness X is: an expert witness, an eye witness, or some OTHER type of witness is frequently going to be determinant, rather than, as you would have it, merely a matter of semantics.
Along with this (the exact type of witness X is) is what the subject matter is. If one attorney just (jocularly?) asks about who's going to win the pennant or what the weather will be like over the weekend, obviously there's no strict need for expertise in meteorology or in knowledge of baseball. But when the answer is in a highly technical field and may influence the trial's verdict, the standard has to be a lot higher.
R. Rowley wrote: "When the question in dispute is whether witness X could (under due process) render an opinion in front of a jury about subject Y in a trial, determining whether witness X is: an expert witness, an eye witness, or some OTHER type of witness is frequently going to be determinant, rather than, as you would have it, merely a matter of semantics."
DeleteThe co-worker would NOT have been an "expert witness" on handwriting. She would have been a LAY witness.
I think we agree on that.
So, the only question should be whether or not she could testify in court that she THOUGHT the "disguised" handwriting on the notes she received from Ivins looked like the handwriting on the anthrax letters.
She would not be giving "expert testimony" that, according to an expert and for legal purposes, the handwriting is the same. She would merely be stating her LAY opinion that the handwriting looked similar to her.
More importantly, she would be testifying that Ivins DISGUISED his handwriting when he sent her those notes. That is "eyewitness" testimony that Ivins would sometimes disguise his handwriting to try to fool people.
There is NO LAW that says she cannot state her opinion about handwriting she saw as an "eyewitness." The jury would understand that it is HER OPINION, not the opinion of a "handwriting expert."
Ed
(part 2)
ReplyDeleteThat was followed by my post(May 16, 2013 at 7:16 AM)
of yesterday's copy and paste/link:
----------------------------------------------------
Fact Witness Law & Legal Definition
A fact witness is a person with knowledge about what happened in a particular case, who testifies in the case about what happened or what the facts are. Fact witness testimony consists of the recitation of facts and/or events as opposed to an expert witness, whose testimony consists of the presentation of an opinion, a diagnosis, etc.
http://definitions.uslegal.com/f/fact-witness/
==========================================================
Once again, I'm willing to be wrong. But if I were wrong, then Mister Lake would be able to provide an example of a non-expert witness giving testimony about a technical field in his testimony. So far, Mister Lake has not done that, either from true-case history or even from the TV courtroom melodramas which form so much of our (layman's) consciousness about courtroom procedures, rules etc.
===========================================================
Any casual reader of this thread can readily see that the above is poorly (at best!) summarized as EITHER 'he thinks he's the supreme authority' or (the lastest iteration) '[he] mostly just argues that evidence isn't evidence unless he believes it's evidence'.
What that casual reader will then conclude about Mister Lake's fairness and/or ability to summarize an opponent's point of view is up to him (the reader).
Mr. Rowley,
DeleteWHAT IS YOUR ARGUMENT?
It appears that "Fact witness" and "lay witness" have slightly different meanings. And NEITHER is an "expert witness."
From http://definitions.uslegal.com/f/fact-witness/
"A fact witness is a person with knowledge about what happened in a particular case, who testifies in the case about what happened or what the facts are. Fact witness testimony consists of the recitation of facts and/or events as opposed to an expert witness, whose testimony consists of the presentation of an opinion, a diagnosis, etc."
From http://definitions.uslegal.com/l/lay-opinion-testimony/
Lay opinion testimony refers to evidence given by a witness who is not qualified as an expert but who testifies to opinions or inferences.
So, a "fact witness" only testifies to facts that involve no opinions.
And, a "lay witness" testifies to opinions and inferences."
But, are those definitions clear or not? Should we look up and argue over the meaning of "Opinion"? There are the opinions of "expert witnesses" given in court as evidence, and there are the opinions of "lay witnesses" given in court about what they saw and though, but NOT about what it means as a matter of law.
What's the point of arguing over the meaning of words when the ONLY issue is whether or not Ivins' co-worker could have testified in court regarding her thoughts about Ivins' handwriting?
She COULD have testified. Haven't be reached an agreement on that?
If not, where is the disagreement -- other than in the definition of words?
R. Rowley also wrote: "But if I were wrong, then Mister Lake would be able to provide an example of a non-expert witness giving testimony about a technical field in his testimony."
Didn't I do that when I showed you Lori Fortier's testimony about a forged document? If not, why not?
Ed
And,they wouldn't need to know HOW Ivins disguised his handwriting.
ReplyDelete----------------------------------------------
At a bare minimum they would have to establish (read: have established for them via testimony/other evidence):
a)that it was disguised (see my 1) 2) 3) 4) points* above)
b) that this resembled Ivins' disguised handwriting.
As far as I can see, legal precedent is such that BOTH 1) and 2) would require an expert witness in a field related to handwriting evaluation.
*In your subsequent post you write as though 1) 2) 3) and 4) are methods that Ivins used to disguise his handprinting, but they are not: they a alternative explanations as to why given exemplars of printing are awkward in appearance.
R. Rowley wrote:
ReplyDelete"At a bare minimum they would have to establish (read: have established for them via testimony/other evidence):
a)that it was disguised"
FALSE. The documents no longer exist except in the lay witness's memory.
I showed you that this is the same as Lori Fortier testifying about a false driver's license that no longer existed except in Lori Fortier's memory. That testimony was acceptable in court.
There is no legal difference between Lori Fortier's real testimony about a false driver's license and Ivins' co-workers hypothetical testimony about Ivins' disguised handwriting.
Or do still believe there is?
If so, what is the basis for you belief? The law is clear. So, it can't have anything to do with the law.
Ed
R. Rowley wrote:
Delete"At a bare minimum they would have to establish (read: have established for them via testimony/other evidence):
a)that it was disguised"
FALSE. The documents no longer exist except in the lay witness's memory.
==============================================
In that sentence I was talking about the Amerithrax texts, which exist in various forms, even on the Internet.
==================================================
I showed you that this is the same as Lori Fortier testifying about a false driver's license that no longer existed except in Lori Fortier's memory. That testimony was acceptable in court.
There is no legal difference between Lori Fortier's real testimony about a false driver's license and Ivins' co-workers hypothetical testimony about Ivins' disguised handwriting.
Or do still believe there is?
==============================================
In the FINAL REPORT, there are two unnamed 'witnesses' (but as I stated, and Mister Lake did not dispute, there may have been more, perhaps FAR more, persons asked by the TASK FORCE about Ivins handwriting vis-a-vis the Amerithrax printing and who may have given contrary opinions*) regarding the 'disguised' Ivins printing. Because they are unnamed we only know the account given as to what they said in the FINAL REPORT.
The only part I disputed as unlikely was: the rendering of a lay opinion on comparing exemplars separated by years and not done in a side-by-side fashion. I see no basis whatsoever for waiving the side-by-side stipulation just because the evaluators are non-professionals in the field.
I see no basis for eschewing handwriting professionals in this case.
*Said another way, the FINAL REPORT may be presenting a decidedly minority opinion on Ivins' printing vis-a-vis the Amerithrax printing, even if we only take into consideration the LAY opinions on the subject.
R. Rowley wrote: "I see no basis for eschewing handwriting professionals in this case."
DeleteThat is your OPINION, which fortunately has nothing to do with reality - unless you believe your OPINION overrides reality.
R. Rowley also wrote: "Said another way, the FINAL REPORT may be presenting a decidedly minority opinion on Ivins' printing vis-a-vis the Amerithrax printing, even if we only take into consideration the LAY opinions on the subject."
Every personal opinion by a lay witness is a "minority opinion." The only "opinion" that counts is the "opinion" of the jury. And just about every human on earth (with one possible exception) knows the difference between a lay opinion and an expert opinion.
Ed
R. Rowley wrote: "I see no basis for eschewing handwriting professionals in this case."
DeleteThat is your OPINION, which fortunately has nothing to do with reality - unless you believe your OPINION overrides reality.
=================================================
What is it you dispute, Mister Lake:
1) that the handwriting comparisons done by document examiners and like professionals constitute a highly technical/specialized field?
or
2)that courts don't usually allow rank amateurs to substitute their graphological comparative judgements, ESPECIALLY when not done in a side-by-side fashion, for the considered opinions of professionals?
Speaking of those professionals again, why do you supposed, Mister Lake, that there is no reference to them in the FINAL REPORT?
R. Rowley wrote: "What is it you dispute, Mister Lake:
Delete1) that the handwriting comparisons done by document examiners and like professionals constitute a highly technical/specialized field?
Although it has nothing to do with the argument here, I dispute that handwriting analysis is a "highly technical" field. Most handwriting "experts" are not much different from fortune tellers. "Forensic handwriting experts" is a "specialized field," but it's debatable wither it is a "highly technical" area or not. Certain aspects of it can be, but almost any intelligent person can compare multiple handwriting samples to determine if they are probably from the same person or not.
"or
2)that courts don't usually allow rank amateurs to substitute their graphological comparative judgements, ESPECIALLY when not done in a side-by-side fashion, for the considered opinions of professionals?"
No one is suggesting any such thing - except you to be purely argumentative.
The lay witness testimony would have been about what the lay witness saw and thought. There could be no side-by-side comparison since the notes Ivins sent with his presents were evidently not saved.
R. Rowley wrote: "Speaking of those professionals again, why do you supposed, Mister Lake, that there is no reference to them in the FINAL REPORT?"
You are playing word games again to be argumentative.
It was NOT a "FINAL REPORT." It was the "Amerithrax Investigative SUMMARY." It was accompanied by 2,720 supplementary pages which showed the words and deeds of the "professionals" investigating the case. And, there were over 9,000 pages of additional data from HIGHLY QUALIFIED EXPERTS in the files sent to the National Academy of Sciences (which are also available for anyone to read).
Ed
Also, the "Amerithrax Investigative Summary" was a SUMMARY of the legal case against Ivins, not a definitive report on every step followed by every investigator over the 7 or 8 years it took to determine that Bruce Ivins was the anthrax mailer.
DeleteThere were undoubtedly COUNTLESS false leads that aren't even mentioned in the files. And, the opinions of "handwriting experts" that do not agree with one another and which were NOT part of the legal case against Bruce Ivins aren't part of the "Summary" because the have nothing to do with the case against Bruce Ivins.
You may want "expert handwriting analysis" to be part of the case, so you can go through it to try to find support for what you believe, but the DOJ decides what part of the case, not you.
Ed
R. Rowley wrote: "Speaking of those professionals again, why do you supposed, Mister Lake, that there is no reference to them in the FINAL REPORT?"
DeleteYou are playing word games again to be argumentative.
It was NOT a "FINAL REPORT." It was the "Amerithrax Investigative SUMMARY."[...]
===================================
Are you:
1) denying that on the Internet that it is commonly called (THE) FINAL REPORT?
2)denying that YOU YOURSELF have used that name on more than one occassion?
Notice how when Mister Lake turns to accusing me of playing "word games" he's knee-deep in his own SCRABBLE
set.
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You may want "expert handwriting analysis" to be part of the case, so you can go through it to try to find support for what you believe, but the DOJ decides what part of the case, not you.
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Not in a trial, and that's where our focus is: what admitted in a case in a trial-room setting is a triangular affair: prosecution and defense trying to include/exclude various elements to better their side's chances, the judge acting as the third leg of the triangle: ruling things in and out as the Rules of Evidence and precedent (case law) dictate.
Notice Mister Lake avoids talking about 'discovery' and what the prosecution would have had to admit to the defense thereby, including but not limited to any evaluations done for the Task Force by professionals in the handwriting evaluation area.
The silence by the AMERITHRAX INVESTIGATIVE SUMMARY on this point is deafening.
R. Rowley wrote: "Are you:
Delete1) denying that on the Internet that it is commonly called (THE) FINAL REPORT?"
I was just making the point that it was not a "final report" in that it was NOT intended to be all-inclusive or to answer all questions. My point was that it was just a "summary" of the case against Ivins, and that there is a lot more information available to support what is in the summary. That additional information contains a lot of what you seem to want from what you call a "final report."
R. Rowley also wrote: "Notice Mister Lake avoids talking about 'discovery' and what the prosecution would have had to admit to the defense thereby, including but not limited to any evaluations done for the Task Force by professionals in the handwriting evaluation area."
Maybe that's because the subject NEVER CAME UP. You appear to bring it up now just to start a NEW and DIFFERENT argument. (That's called "being argumentative.")
What is it you fantasize would come up in "discovery" that is worth discussing?
R. Rowley also wrote: "The silence by the AMERITHRAX INVESTIGATIVE SUMMARY on this point is deafening."
What point? Discovery? Are you now trying to start yet another NEW argument that the "Amerithrax Investigation Summary" wasn't written the way YOU BELIEVE it should have written -- and therefore there's something wrong with it?
Are you now the supreme authority on what such documents should include? And, if the government doesn't do things your way, then they are covering up something? Is that your argument?
Ed
Again from this week's comment:
ReplyDelete--------------------------
The actual driver's license was NOT presented in court. It had evidently been destroyed by McVeigh after he used it to rent a Ryder truck to haul the explosives he used to blow up the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in April 1995. So, this key piece of evidence existed only in the memory of a lay witness who could testify about it. No "expert witnesses" were needed to testify that it truly was a fake license, that it showed McVeigh's photograph, or that Timothy McVeigh had the capability to create it. There were no objections from the Defense when the lay witness testimony was given. Both Truthers had argued that such things would never be allowed in court.
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No, I have repeatedly stated that expert testimony is needed when
the subject draws on a (highly)technical field, especially when some sort of judgement, opinion is rendered. Neither is involved here. That was my understanding before last week, it is my understanding this week (after looking at as many sources as I could). There are probably many, many such fields and the list probably grows as time marches on.
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Back to Mister Lake:
The actual driver's license was NOT presented in court. It had evidently been destroyed by McVeigh after he used it to rent a Ryder truck to haul the explosives he used to blow up the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in April 1995. So, this key piece of evidence existed only in the memory of a lay witness who could testify about it.
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Okay, but then that name the witness remembered on the driver's license must have matched the name under which McVeigh rented the Ryder truck, for when you rent vehicles, the rental agency wants proof of ID and proof of a driver's license, and I GUESS the latter (a valid driver's license) can fulfill both requirements.
And if the name the witness remembered did NOT match the name McVeigh used to rent the vehicle then it (the name/phony driver's license) doesn't tie McVeigh to the bombing (since it doesn't tie him to the Ryder truck rental). Thus it's no evidence of guilt/innocence.
R. Rowley wrote: "No, I have repeatedly stated that expert testimony is needed when the subject draws on a (highly)technical field, especially when some sort of judgement, opinion is rendered. Neither is involved here."
ReplyDeleteRight. Neither is involved here.
The LAY witness would have testified that notes she received from Bruce Ivins appeared - IN HER OPINION - to be similar to the handwriting on the anthrax letters.
She would NOT be testifying to the jury that the handwriting on the anthrax letters was IN THE OPINION OF AN EXPERT the same as Ivins disguised handwriting.
Nor would she be testifying about some "highly technical" field. It's been explained to you before that lay witness testimony about handwriting has been found to be just about as accurate as "expert testimony." Handwriting analysis is not a "highly technical" field. If it were, why would the FBI send out hundreds of thousands of postcards to ordinary citizens to ask them if they recognized the handwriting on the anthrax letters?
R. Rowley also wrote: And if the name the witness remembered did NOT match the name McVeigh used to rent the vehicle then it (the name/phony driver's license) doesn't tie McVeigh to the bombing (since it doesn't tie him to the Ryder truck rental). Thus it's no evidence of guilt/innocence."
And, what if the name McVeigh used when he rented the Ryder truck WAS the name on the false driver's licence?
From wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing
"On April 14, 1995, McVeigh paid for a motel room at the Dreamland Motel in Junction City, Kansas. The following day he rented a 1993 Ford F-700 truck from Ryder under the name Robert D. Kling, an alias he adopted because he knew an Army soldier named Kling with whom he shared physical characteristics, and because it reminded him of the Klingon warriors of Star Trek. "
Robert Kling was the name on the false driver's license that Lori Fortier saw, and thus it was EVIDENCE of McVeigh's guilt.
You're just not paying attention.
Ed
R. Rowley wrote: "No, I have repeatedly stated that expert testimony is needed when the subject draws on a (highly)technical field, especially when some sort of judgement, opinion is rendered. Neither is involved here."
ReplyDeleteRight. Neither is involved here.
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Wrong, BOTH are involved. Sure, people can, and outside of courtrooms sometimes do compare handwritings: 'Gee, you write just like my cousin Willie!'
Such a comparison would NOT be admissible (if Uncle Willie were in the dock for something which involved his handwriting) because it's: subjective and impressionistic and therefore subject to unreliability.
Rules of Evidence standards are higher.
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[Mister Lake]
The LAY witness would have testified that notes she received from Bruce Ivins appeared - IN HER OPINION - to be similar to the handwriting on the anthrax letters.
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Rendering an "opinion" (Mister Lake's word) in a highly technical field about a subject whose import is potentially crucial is precisely why due process would likely exclude such an opinion by a non-professional in the field. There are here TWO human faculties which can be erroneous: the intellect (false evaluation) and the memory (misremembering exactly what the exemplars of years ago looked like).
============================================
[Mister Lake]
She would NOT be testifying to the jury that the handwriting on the anthrax letters was IN THE OPINION OF AN EXPERT the same as Ivins disguised handwriting.
----------------
She's excluded from doing that anyway: it's hearsay.
R. Rowley wrote: "Rendering an "opinion" (Mister Lake's word .."
Delete"Opinion" is my word. "Rendering" is your word. I said nothing about rendering an opinion.
You're playing word games again to be argumentative.
The witness would NOT be "rendering an opinion" when she testified in court about the handwriting. She would be testifying as to what she saw and thought as a witness to events in the case.
Ed
R. Rowley wrote: "Rendering an "opinion" (Mister Lake's word .."
Delete"Opinion" is my word. "Rendering" is your word. I said nothing about rendering an opinion.
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"Rendering" is just a fancy word for "give". If a witness doesn't "give" an opinion, then how is the jury to know about it?!!?!?!?!? How is the attorney thinking about calling that witness going to know about it?
I'M BEING ARGUMENTATIVE?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
Saying printing X on the front of a package you received in 1999 resembles printing Y on the outside of an Amerithrax letter of 2001 is: opinion. And not highly reliable opinion at that.
R. Rowley wrote: "I'M BEING ARGUMENTATIVE?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?"
DeleteYes. You're now arguing that "giving an opinion" is the same as "giving testimony" which includes opinions. It's not the same.
You're being argumentative because these word games of yours have NOTHING TO DO WITH THE ISSUE.
The issue is whether or not a witness can testify in court about what she thought when she saw a handwriting sample. She CAN. She is a lay witness who saw things that are relevant to the case.
Ed
R. Rowley wrote: "I'M BEING ARGUMENTATIVE?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?"
DeleteYes. You're now arguing that "giving an opinion" is the same as "giving testimony" which includes opinions. It's not the same.
======================================
I'm trying to be as concise and to the point as I know how. The only point (that I can see) of contention between us ON THIS THREAD is: whether the 2 persons mentioned in the FINAL REPORT vis-a-vis Ivins' distant mailings and the printing thereon would be able to give/render/testify about/[select your own darned synonym here] in court in front of a jury about any mental comparison(s) those 2 witnesses did between the Ivins-sent packages and the Amerithrax texts (letters and envelopes).
Since their testimony, if given, would be far wider than merely making those comparisons (if the comparisons were allowed), I referred either directly or by implication to the opinion(s) as the rest of it is not in dispute as to admissibility.
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You're being argumentative because these word games of yours have NOTHING TO DO WITH THE ISSUE.
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What "word games"? Trying to find out the legal and/or common meanings of such expressions as "expert witness",
"eye witness" (post of May 15, 2013 at 2:00 PM), "fact witness" (post of May 16, 2013 at 7:16 AM)is integral to finding out the legal status of those two unnamed persons mentioned on pages 89-90 of the FINAL REPORT and thus to finding out what the limits are on their testimony. I don't apologize for trying to find that out.
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R. Rowley wrote: "Since their testimony, if given, would be far wider than merely making those comparisons (if the comparisons were allowed), I referred either directly or by implication to the opinion(s) as the rest of it is not in dispute as to admissibility."
DeleteIs that English? I can't make any sense of it.
R. Rowley also wrote: "I don't apologize for trying to find that out."
If you had really wanted to find answers, you would have paid more attention to what you cited. You cited this as a definition of "eyewitness":
"a person who actually sees some act, occurrence, or thing and can give a firsthand account of it: There were two eyewitnesses to the murder."
Note that it does NOT say "a person who sees some crime," it just uses "eyewitnesses to the murder" as an example.
An eyewitness can see some "act" or "occurrence" of deception, such as Ivins writing notes in a disguised handwriting. And, an eyewitness can see some "thing" such as a note Ivins sent with a gift (another "thing") that required the recipient to figure out clues to the sender's identity.
If you want to figure things out, don't just look for things you can interpret to fit what you already believe.
Ed
And, what if the name McVeigh used when he rented the Ryder truck WAS the name on the false driver's licence?
ReplyDelete---------------------------------------------
Then it connects him to the crime whereas if Lori Fortier testified to the same thing but there was nothing connecting that name to the crime, then it would mean......nothing.
I love how Mister Lake 'argues' even when we (occasionally) agree.
Remembering a name, though I find it difficult, would not be a 'highly technical field'. Thus is contradicts nothing I wrote in this thread (or any other thread for that matter).
R. Rowley wrote: "Remembering a name, though I find it difficult, would not be a 'highly technical field'. Thus is contradicts nothing I wrote in this thread (or any other thread for that matter)."
DeleteYou're playing games again just to be argumentative. The name was a name on a FALSE driver's license. Lay testimony about a False driver's license is just as technical (or NON-technical) as lay testimony about disguised handwriting.
The testimony was about the FALSE driver's license that McVeigh used to rent the truck. Arguing that her testimony was just about a name that she remembered is distorting the facts to create a false argument.
Ed
R. Rowley wrote: "Remembering a name, though I find it difficult, would not be a 'highly technical field'. Thus is contradicts nothing I wrote in this thread (or any other thread for that matter)."
DeleteYou're playing games again just to be argumentative. The name was a name on a FALSE driver's license. Lay testimony about a False driver's license is just as technical (or NON-technical) as lay testimony about disguised handwriting.
===================================================
"Lay testimony about a False driver's license is just as technical...."
=================================================
Really, now you are just being silly. She knew it was a false name because: McVeigh asked her to laminate it. In the course of laminating it, she saw McVeigh's photo with the false name (address etc). What's "technical" about that??!?!
R. Rowley wrote: "What's "technical" about that??!?!"
DeleteSo, now we're going to argue about the word "technical"? It is your argument that it is "technical" and that an "expert's" opinion is needed.
Forensic document examination is a "technical" field.
Forensic handwriting analysis is a "technical" field.
However, lay witnesses can still testify about documents and about handwriting.
Lori Fortier testified that she saw a false driver's license. It was her LAY opinion that the driver's license was false. No opinions from forensic document examiners were needed. There is nothing they could do, since the driver's license no longer existed.
Ivins' co-worker would have testified that she saw handwriting on notes and that it was Ivins' disguised handwriting. It would be her LAY opinion that it was Ivins' disguised handwriting. No opinions from forensic handwriting experts would have been needed. There is nothing they could do since the notes from Ivins no longer existed.
The fields may be "technical," but that doesn't mean that a lay witness cannot testify to what she saw and thought about what she saw.
Ed
The fields may be "technical," but that doesn't mean that a lay witness cannot testify to what she saw and thought about what she saw.
Delete==========================================
Yes, but comparisons* that are not side-by-side AND not done by persons with the right background in Questioned Documents etc. are exluded.
The "thinking" that one may do contemporaneously and the thinking that one might do weels, months, and years later are two different things.
R. Rowley wrote: "Yes, but comparisons* that are not side-by-side AND not done by persons with the right background in Questioned Documents etc. are exluded."
ReplyDeleteFALSE. FALSE. FALSE. FALSE. FALSE. FALSE. FALSE. FALSE. FALSE. FALSE. FALSE. FALSE. FALSE. FALSE. FALSE. FALSE. FALSE. FALSE. FALSE. FALSE. FALSE.
How many times do I have to explain this to you? YOU ARE MISTAKEN.
If an "eye witness" or "lay witness" on the stand is talking about something she saw that is relevant to the case, there's NOTHING WRONG with her saying that the writing on a letter she no longer has seemed to be similar to the writing on the anthrax letters. IT'S WHAT SHE SAW AND THOUGHT. She's an "EYE WITNESS" testifying to what she saw and thought. The JURY decides whether to believe her or not.
And EXPERT WITNESS, on the other hand, testifies to his analysis of two documents and what his analysis means to the case in a court of law. The jury SHOULD accept what the "expert" says - unless of course, the other side has a different "expert" who interprets things differently.
For example, if Don Foster got up in court and stated that he saw a deliberate attempt to imitate Russian writing in the St. Petersburg letters, the jury SHOULD accept that if it is not challenged by the other side. If the other side presents an expert who says that the so-called Russian style is just the result of someone disguising his handwriting by writing while looking in a mirror, then the jury would have to decide which "expert" to believe.
Ed