Identification of tattoo marks： let the evidence be confusing

editorial comment/note

Forensic expertise of literary marks is an important part of criminal science and technology, which plays an irreplaceable role in confirming the subject of crime, adjusting the direction of investigation and finding evidence of crime. With the deepening of the struggle against all kinds of criminal offences, there are more and more cases involving the judicial expertise of literary marks. Only through the expertise can some cases be eliminated and the true can be confirmed. This issue of "Smart Inspection" focuses on the forensic identification technology of tattoo marks, and shows the experiences and practices of the procuratorates of the three places in handwriting analysis and application, tattoo marks identification, etc., so please pay attention.

Using handwriting analysis to "portrait" the suspect

Qin ye

Procuratorial technicians of Guizhou Provincial Procuratorate are analyzing the characteristics of handwriting.

Handwriting is the trace left by writing action on writing through writing tools, and it is the unique image of everyone’s writing. Handwriting identification is to compare and identify suspicious handwriting and suspect handwriting. Its task is to analyze the time and provide clues and evidence for litigation by studying the characteristics of writing habits, text layout and written language reflected in handwriting. Handwriting analysis is based on handwriting characteristics, combined with psychology, calligraphy and other multidisciplinary knowledge, to analyze the writer’s personality characteristics, the writer’s psychological state and so on. In judicial practice, handwriting analysis should not be directly used for case analysis, and it needs to be compared with the known case before it can be used for clue analysis and judgment. It plays an important role in completing the collection and fixation of evidence and finding out the truth.

Usually, handwriting analysis needs a certain amount of normal handwriting, and the analysis of writing materials with more than 10 pages is the most ideal, because only after writing this amount of handwriting can the writer’s mood and personality be fully reflected. In addition, the writing materials of handwriting analysis need to involve the writer’s work, family and personal experience, so as to capture clues through the changes of handwriting characteristics. In order to further illustrate the role of handwriting analysis in cases, two cases of duty crimes are listed below to show in detail how handwriting analysis plays a role in handling cases.

Case 1: Analyze the writing characteristics and find the hidden money. In a duty crime case, the case-handling personnel have collected 17 self-written materials of 129 pages, including 5 written materials with more than 10 pages. The content involves the suspect’s work, family and marriage, the explanation of the circumstances involved and the understanding of corruption. On the whole, the handwriting is normal, with no signs of disguise, which meets the requirements of handwriting analysis. Through observation, the technicians found the following rules: first, in the overall composition, the upper part of the page is left and the lower part is right; Second, in terms of handwriting characteristics, the font is small, left-leaning, the word spacing gradually decreases from the beginning to the end of the line, the overall line spacing is large, and the line trend is slightly inclined; Third, a single handwriting presents a trapezoidal structure with more rigid strokes. Through the above observation, the technicians combined their experience and adopted the suggestions of psychologists and investigators to sort out the following analysis opinions:

First, the characteristics of the overall composition show that the suspect’s personality may include these elements: lack of courage and small measurement; Do not dare to take responsibility, have a subconscious mind of flattery; Too passive avoidance, easy to lose confidence in others and themselves; Do things with forbearance, take retreat as progress, etc.

Secondly, the morphological characteristics of handwriting indicate that the suspect’s personality may include the following elements: persistent endurance, keen observation, good at analysis and meticulous work; Personality tends to be introverted, and there are often unconscious fears and uneasiness in the heart; Lack of self-restraint, strong desire for self-expansion, and emptiness inside; It has good social adaptability, but it is pessimistic and negative.

Thirdly, the morphological characteristics of single words show that the suspect’s personality may contain too hypocritical and even some elements of grandstanding.

Compare the above analysis opinions with the known cases, and form the following confirmation:

First, the suspect lost his mother when he was young, and his stepmother was strong. This experience is easy to form the suspect’s character of small measurement, forbearance and retreat, which is confirmed by the results of handwriting analysis; Second, the suspect tried to flaunt his filial piety to his stepmother after he became an official, but the investigation revealed that the suspect was very cold to his stepmother and his stepmother’s brother, which confirmed the hypocrisy and grandstanding mentioned in the handwriting analysis. After comparing the other characters of the suspect with the investigation, some of them have been confirmed. As a result, handwriting analysis has played the following roles in handling cases:

Identify the direction of investigation. The suspect engaged in urban construction projects during his leadership in a county, and reported a large number of bribes, but the directionality was not strong, so it was difficult to determine the direction of investigation at the moment. As mentioned above, the suspect has the subconscious of not taking responsibility for doing things, flattering and fawning, and at the same time has the personality characteristics of being too passive to avoid and easily losing confidence in others and themselves. As a result, investigators turned their investigation focus to contractors who had no contact with the suspects on the surface, but were related to some officials. As a result, they quickly verified a large number of bribery facts and found many clues to handling cases.

Determine the whereabouts of the stolen money. In this case, due to the strong resistance of the suspect, the whereabouts of the bribe money have not been ascertained. In order to find the hidden illicit money, the investigators expanded the scope of investigation to their family, relatives, friends and specific related persons, and found nothing. As a result, the case-handling team found new clues by using the results of handwriting analysis. As mentioned above, the suspect is suspicious, meticulous, unhappy in marriage and family, poor in self-control, and has a certain sense of emptiness psychologically, so he may need to seek a sense of psychological security. Therefore, he may have a special sense of dependence on those who provide him with psychological comfort. Based on this analysis, the investigators re-examined the suspect’s daily contacts and found that Liu, a psychology lecturer in a university, had contacts with the suspect. According to the investigation, Liu is a well-known psychological counselor in the industry and once gave psychological counseling to suspects. Therefore, the case-handling team inquired about the account under Liu’s name and found a large amount of funds, which were stored within one month. After further investigation and verification, this fund is the hidden money of the suspect. It can be seen that if this case is not based on handwriting analysis to judge the suspect’s personality, it is difficult to locate the investigation object to Liu. Because Liu is not an old friend of the suspect, there are not many communication records displayed, and he is not a specific related person. However, the suspect’s trust in Liu obviously exceeds his trust in his family, which is far from the normal logical analysis. It was through handwriting analysis that the psychological problems of the suspect were discovered, and finally the investigation object was turned to Liu, and then the hidden money was found.

Case 2: Writing habits reveal fabricated traces. In practice, technicians sometimes pay attention to the suspect’s writing process in real time with the help of technical equipment, which will obtain more information and better the effect of handwriting analysis and application.

In the process of investigating Wang’s suspected duty crime case, in view of Wang’s habit of writing materials, technicians observed Wang’s writing process during monitoring, recorded Wang’s writing speed and pause time one by one, and compared the writing materials sent by Wang with the discarded writing materials one by one, focusing on finding the emotional fluctuation points reflected in his handwriting. In the end, it was found that Wang had neat handwriting, compact line spacing, smooth writing, few pauses and slightly larger handwriting when writing family situations. Through handwriting analysis, it can be inferred that Wang pays more attention to the family and the relationship between husband and wife is good. After investigation, this situation is true. Therefore, in the follow-up interrogation, the investigators obviously increased the family-related conversation content, so as to do Wang’s ideological work and achieved good results. In addition, when Wang wrote about defending his involvement in the case, he often paused and repeatedly read the previous materials. When the technicians compared Wang’s various writing materials, they found that some sentences in the handwriting of defending matters were too small and the downward trend was obvious. Therefore, the case-handling team marked and summarized such handwriting from various self-written materials, and found that the summarized content just presented a relatively complete set of fabricated statements. Originally, Wang’s anti-detection awareness and skills were high, and he deliberately dispersed the fabricated contents to various materials, which greatly weakened the traces of fabrication and enhanced the credibility, but Wang’s handwriting characteristics betrayed him. It can be seen that this case well proves that handwriting can truly reflect the psychological fluctuation when writing, and this psychological fluctuation is not easily influenced by people’s subjectivity.This further proves the practical value of handwriting analysis.

(Author: Guizhou Provincial People’s Procuratorate)

"the trace of disappearance"

Chongqing: Procuratorial technical team makes precise efforts to improve the efficiency of handling cases.

Tangqian

The technicians of the Judicial Appraisal Center of Chongqing Procuratorate used instruments to compare the fingerprint images.

"I didn’t write this signature at all." "I don’t remember signing this IOU." "I suspect that this contract has been tampered with by the other party." "Is the guarantee contract printed first, or the seal on the blank paper first?"……In the civil and commercial activities or the procuratorial supervision of false litigation cases, these difficult problems often appear, which will always bring a lot of confusion to prosecutors in handling cases. In this regard, the technical team of the Judicial Appraisal Center of Chongqing Procuratorate has given full play to its professional advantages, deeply studied the key points of various technical categories such as handwriting identification, fingerprint identification and document formation methods, and has repeatedly played a miraculous role in helping to handle cases, opening a breakthrough for deadlocked cases.

Li Moufu’s case: reputation damage is difficult to prove for many years.

In practical work, not every sample and sample to be tested are neatly "fed to the mouth", and many materials need to be excavated, and the identification conditions are usually not satisfactory. The case of Li Moufu, which the team once handled, concentrated on all kinds of extreme situations of handwriting identification and fingerprint identification in sample search, which was very typical.

In April 2018, when Li Moufu’s unit cleaned up the employee file information, it was found that Li Moufu was sentenced to six months in prison by the Y District Court for committing theft on February 24, 2002. After checking with himself, Li Moufu believed that his identity information was stolen by others, and immediately filed a complaint with the Y District Procuratorate, saying that he was completely ignorant of the litigation process and had never committed theft. The original judgment was wrong. After accepting the case, the prosecutor read the case file of Li Moufu’s theft and got a general understanding of the case, but it was difficult to judge the authenticity of the legal documents in the original lawsuit, so the prosecutor handling the case turned to the technical team of the Judicial Appraisal Center of Chongqing Procuratorate for help.

Since the technical team took this case, it has encountered great difficulties in collecting handwriting and fingerprint samples:

In terms of handwriting, Li Moufu has a low level of education and seldom writes, and there are very few handwriting samples that can be collected for comparison. What is more difficult is that it has been more than 16 years since the original judgment came into effect, and there are few natural samples with relatively high value in handwriting identification. In terms of fingerprints, Li Moufu suffered from skin diseases, and his fingers were covered with tumors. After repeated stamping experiments, it was still difficult to see the fingerprint morphology clearly, and it was impossible to carry out fingerprint identification.

In order to dig out the sample materials that can be compared, the appraiser rushed to Li Moufu’s unit with inspection instruments and equipment, rummaged through the employee files with the cooperation of the personnel archives department, and collected Li Moufu’s graduate register and student data sheet many years ago, and screened out a batch of materials that can be used as samples, and the time span just covered the writing time of the samples. Through the comparison test, the appraiser ruled out the differences caused by the diachronic changes of handwriting, and found out the most stable details in Li Moufu’s handwriting. Through comprehensive evaluation, it was concluded that the sample and the sample reflected completely different writing habits, which means that the sample and the sample were not written by the same person.

Subsequently, with the help of the big data analysis system of the public security department, the appraiser speculated that the true identity of the defendant in the original trial might be Chen Mou, the brother-in-law of Li Moufu. If we can extract Chen Mou’s fingerprint sample and identify it with the fingerprint on the sample, we may be able to lock the true identity of the defendant in the original trial. However, Chen Mou died of illness in 2017 and was unable to collect her fingerprint samples. After further understanding, Chen Mou was forced to be isolated and detoxified for taking drugs, and his fingerprint samples were left in the relevant files. Through contact with the local public security organ, the appraiser extracted two fingerprints left in the volume, but the fingerprints have been scattered and the lines are not very clear. The appraiser didn’t give up, but used the comparison test equipment brought from the laboratory to extract and process the image, and the fingerprint gradually became clear, from which a large number of stable matching features were found, which was enough to make the same determination.

Finally, after breaking through many difficulties, the appraiser issued an appraisal opinion that "Li Moufu’s signature handwriting in many materials of Li Moufu’s theft case file was not written by Li Moufu himself, but the fingerprint of Li Moufu’s signature handwriting in many materials was formed by Chen Mou’s seal", which helped the prosecutor to accurately restore the fact that the defendant in the original trial was wrong.

Wen Ning, a senior engineer who handled the case, sighed, "The appraiser should give full play to his subjective initiative, overcome difficulties, try to find solutions, put forward reasonable opinions and suggestions on collecting sample materials, carry out inspection and appraisal by using systematic inspection methods according to the actual situation, and solve problems for prosecutors from the overall perspective of the case."

Zhou Moyang’s case: corruption and moth finally appeared

If excellent professional and technical level and loyal handling attitude are the "software" of the technical team, then professional instruments and equipment can be called the indispensable "hardware" in handling cases. The technical team once used VSC8000 document retrieval workstation to help solve Zhou Moyang’s corruption case of 10 million yuan.

Zhou Moyang was originally a diligent civil servant. After years of dull work, he was gradually blinded by money and used the loopholes in the accounting system of the unit to move his head. He entrusted his classmates to buy five invisible pens for him, and started to implement his evil plan: he first filled in a small expense report with invisible pens, and after the leaders signed and approved the reimbursement opinions with normal pens, the contents filled in with invisible pens would disappear automatically within a few hours. At this time, Zhou Mouyang re-filled the reimbursement contents and amount on the disappeared text content, and used the invoices falsely written by people in the society to reimburse the financial department. From March 2008 to February 2011, Zhou Moyang reimbursed 115 cases in this way, with a total corruption of 10,384,755 yuan.

Because the case involved a large number of financial bills, which lasted for many years, the parties involved could not recall many details of the case clearly, which led to the inability to lock the facts of the crime. When the case-handling personnel sent 148 expense reimbursement forms involved to the judicial appraisal center of the hospital, the appraisers observed them one by one in natural light at first, and found no abnormality. Then observe it with a high-power microscope, observe it under the irradiation of multi-band light source, and inspect it with floodlight, transmitted light and narrow-band strong light source on the document inspection workstation, and no trace of addition, modification or digging is found, and no potential handwriting is found in the columns such as reimbursement department, date and amount. The case was deadlocked for a while.

Then, the technicians thought of VSC8000 document retrieval workstation, and a magical scene appeared: when 254nm ultraviolet light was irradiated on the sample, a large number of clear dark blue handwriting appeared under the original visible handwriting on the reimbursement form, under the blank space of the reimbursement form and under the Arabic numerals in the amount column, and the content was quite different from the original visible handwriting. As a result, the appraiser found potential handwriting in the columns of reimbursement department, date and amount on the expense reimbursement form No.34 to No.148. In this regard, the case-handling personnel quickly locked in the facts of the crime and improved the evidence chain in time, which was adopted by the court.

Wang Ziyang, director of the procuratorial business support department of the Chongqing Municipal Procuratorate, said, "We must not relax for a moment in strengthening these technical capabilities of document inspection and trace inspection. Chongqing integrates the procuratorial technical talents and resources of the third-level hospitals, and strives to provide high-quality procuratorial technical products for the’ four major procuratorates’ by intensive means, and strives to make front-line case handlers have a greater sense of acquisition. "

(Author: Chongqing Municipal People’s Procuratorate)

True and false signature

Lu Saiyan   Hu Jing

The procuratorial technicians of Wenzhou Procuratorate in Zhejiang Province observed and examined the handwriting through a stereomicroscope.

Recently, a banner of "prosecuting according to law, ensuring justice and upholding justice for the people" was sent to the Fourth Procuratorial Department of Yongjia County Procuratorate, Zhejiang Province. Chen Mou, the applicant, thanked the procurator for his hard work.

Things have to go back to March 2020, and the Fourth Procuratorate of Yongjia County Procuratorate received a complaint. "I didn’t guarantee for others, but the court ruled that I should bear the guarantee responsibility of more than 200,000 yuan and asked the prosecutor to pay me justice." The situation mentioned in the complaint has attracted the attention of prosecutors.

At that time, when the enterprise resumed work and production, it entered a critical stage. The hospital immediately set up a special project class to concentrate on reviewing it.

Due to the impact of the epidemic, the prosecutor in charge was unable to meet with Chen Mou, the applicant in Shanghai. After asking by phone and obtaining the file from Yongjia County Court, he learned that Chen Mou had opened a handicraft company with his father (Chen Mou B). Later, when the father and son had a dispute over trivial matters, Chen Mou withdrew from the company, no longer participated in the company affairs, and the two had no further contact. Chen Mou didn’t know anything about what happened after the company. Until 2019, the Executive Board of Yongjia County Court froze Chen Mou’s bank account, and he realized that Chen Mou B borrowed money from Zhang for the company’s production and operation in 2015, and even listed him as a guarantor without telling him. Later, Chen Mou B failed to repay Zhang’s loan in time for various reasons. Zhang filed a civil lawsuit in Yongjia County Court in 2018, and the court ruled that Chen Mou should bear the guarantee responsibility of more than 200,000 yuan. In this regard, Chen Mou felt that it was unfair to assume the guarantee responsibility without his knowledge.

After careful investigation and analysis, the prosecutor found that the guarantor’s signature on the IOU was quite different from Chen Mou’s usual signature, and it was more likely that the guarantor’s signature on the IOU was forged. However, the evidence provided by the applicant Chen Mou was only a copy of the guarantee and several personal signature documents, and there was no other direct evidence to prove that the guarantee was forged, so it was difficult to identify the reasons for his appeal at the moment.

In order to find out the case, the prosecutor contacted the creditor Zhang, who told the undertaker that the IOU was given to him after Chen Mou B signed his name, and he didn’t know whether it was signed by Chen Mou himself. Zhang’s statement further confirmed the undertaker’s guess.

Subsequently, the prosecutor obtained the contact information of Chen Mou B through various channels, trying to obtain further evidence from it, but he refused to cooperate with the investigation and could not obtain his effective statement.

The prosecutor in charge believes that the only evidence that Chen Mou bears the guarantee responsibility in this case is the signature of "Chen Mou" on the guarantee in 2015. Therefore, the key point of this case is whether the signature was written by himself. According to Zhang, he did not see Chen Mou sign the guarantee with his own eyes, while Chen Mou B kept silent on the matter. After learning about Chen Mou’s education level, property status and personal credit information, the undertaker found that apart from this civil lawsuit, Chen Mou.

In order to uncover the mystery, the prosecutor specially went to the Judicial Appraisal Center of Wenzhou Procuratorate to communicate with experts. The handwriting appraisal experts pointed out that because the IOUs in this case were formed in 2015, a certain number of handwriting samples signed by Chen Mou around 2015 were needed as samples for handwriting appraisal, and the samples provided must come from an objective and impartial third party.

After many years, how can we objectively and quickly obtain Chen Mou’s handwriting at the same time, and undertake the prosecutor’s inquiries in many places? Under the guidance of the handwriting expert of the Municipal Academy, we finally found out that Chen Mou had handled the account opening procedures in many banks and securities companies in a city from 2010 to 2019, and handled the passport application and account change procedures in the city’s public security organs. Because these procedures require Chen Mou’s signature, and the above units have no interest in this case, they have objective and fair conditions. Therefore, the prosecutor in charge went to Yueqing City and Longwan District of Wenzhou City for many times to collect more than 20 originals of relevant signature materials, and took photos to fix them as handwriting identification samples.

After intensive evidence collection, the Judicial Appraisal Center of Wenzhou Procuratorate finally made handwriting appraisal, confirming that the signature on the letter of guarantee in this case was not signed by Chen Mou himself.

On this basis, Yongjia County Procuratorate put forward a retrial proposal to Yongjia County Court on this case, arguing that the only evidence that the court ruled that Chen Mou was responsible for the guarantee was forged, and the facts of this case were unclear and the evidence was insufficient, so it should be retried.

On August 13, 2020, Yongjia County Court adopted the court’s suggestion of retrial and decided to retry the case. During the retrial, based on the special relationship between Chen Mou and Chen Mou B in this case, Chen Mou was willing to bear part of the debt, Zhang reached a settlement with Chen Mou, and Chen Mou withdrew his retrial application. On December 14th, 2020, Yongjia County Court ruled that Chen Mou was allowed to withdraw his retrial request.

At this point, a lawsuit supervision triggered by a true and false signature has a happy ending.

(Author: Yongjia County People’s Procuratorate, Zhejiang Province)