The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-02-19
THE HAND-wnrrrNe EXPERT.

Under the heading. worthless Tcs- timony." we find this in the Raleigh Evening Times:
 e~' imony by so-called handwriting experts is much like two-edged In the Mann trial In New York one expert" testified that the endorse ment on a paper was written by Col. nature in no way resembled that of the black. mailer under indictment In many notable murder cases this sort but nowadays jurors are less Inclined to accept is We have fin mind a case from another state. the main facts of arrested for killing his wife. She was lying in bed. with the bed clothes up to her chin. and when the neighbors of by a shotgun. when there was noth- ing to indicate that she could possibly have pulled the trigger The husband was convicted. He secured q new trial, was convicted again. and finally the Supreme Court he'd that the verdict was right. The next step was to. ap- make sure his position the governor employed Une of those New York ex- perts to determine whether or not the the basis of the suicide theory. This note. to which the woman's name was signed, said briefly. T committed sui by the prosecution that the husband had written it to divert suspicion. At any rate. the governor. ignoring the na sse the srdes sesncs of and sFse e murderer was not hanged. He was not set free, however, and he is in the soday Sf ,am S as nsty s held if he was saved from the gal iows by. the ex-parte evidence of a takir who ,,ssssa. vas never Sss sworn; He is and yet on this flimsy testimony he received the halfway punishment when he should have been hanged or let such testimony alone.
 TO take the latter case first it would seem that there was really little need of expert evidence. as it would ap- pear impossible that she could have committed suicide, judging from her position when found and the apparent impossibility of inflieting the wound from which she died, and with such q weapon as shotgun. If the Cow ernor had reason to believe that the woman wrote the note and then killed herself the man should have been par doned. On the other hand, if he be- lieved the husband guilty, as the courts had decided, it was wrong to commute, his sentence. We agree with the Times that he should have been pardoned or executed.
 1 In the case of Col, Mann there were the two experts directly contradicting each other and it was not an unusual incident. As a general thing hand writing experts can not be relied on, and especially is this true in the case of persons signature. Unless man signs his name in a very peculiaf man ner no one can safely swear to 1t. Men sign their names under many different circumstances and conditions and all of us have seen such variations in known signatures that we might easily doubt that they were written by tho same man. There are many men so expert with pen that they can easily initiate an, ordinary sigma ture and do 1t so we'll that no one Icould safely swear which was the orig inal.
 The fact is that the testimony of handwriting experts is the least to De reheo oh oA dlhoSt any sNluence that is ever submitted to a court There is never an important forgery case in which there are not experts on each side who flatly contradict each other, as in the Mann trial. and no jury should convict on testimony of that character. The chances of error are so much greater than are the proba- ! long chances to decide pro or con when such testimony is all that can be produced.