Handwriting on letter matches Tippett’s, trial told
Significant similarities were found between Stanley Tippett’s penmanship and the printing in several letters he allegedly wrote in an effort to clear his name of two convictions.
Jacqueline Osmond testified the results of her analysis of Tippett’s printing during his obstruction of justice retrial in Cobourg Tuesday.
She’s a forensic document examiner at the Centre for Forensic Sciences in Toronto.
Osmond testified as the Crown’s expert in handwriting, hand printing and signatures. She’s testified in court 30 times.
Tippett, 40, was convicted of kidnapping and sexually assaulting an intoxicated 12-year-old girl in 2009. He picked her up on a southend street and took her to an area behind a Courtice high school in August 2008.
He was sentenced as a dangerous offender in 2011, receiving an indefinite jail sentence.
While he was appealing the conviction, Tippett allegedly wrote letters to a fellow inmate at the Lindsay jail, asking him to lie in order to help his win his appeal.
But that inmate handed the letters over to city police, leading to Tippett’s obstruction of justice charge.
Tippett, a father of six, pleaded not guilty to writing the letters.
His first trial for the charge ended in a mistrial in September 2013 when jurors couldn’t agree on a verdict.
On the first day of the retrial on Feb. 13, the Crown revealed that the original letters had been accidentally lost in the court system.
Osmond, however, had a chance to examine those letters in January 2012 before they went missing.
She compared Tippett’s printing on prison forms to the 15 letters he allegedly wrote.
At the time, Osmond was given photocopies of the prison forms, which she said weren’t the best quality.
“There was some detail visible, but not a lot,” Osmond testified.
The expert told the court it’s best to study original documents when analyzing printing or writing. Photocopies can leave voids or have dirt on them.
From her examination, Osmond concluded that Tippett “probably wrote” the letters.
When Osmond was asked by the Crown to review Tippett’s printing a second time in July 2015 for the retrial, she was given original copies of his prison forms.
Using the originals, she was able to detect how letters and numbers were constructed based on their starting points and the fluidity of the writing, for example.
Her analysis revealed “significant similarities” between the printing in the letters and Tippett’s prison forms.
“In this case, I didn’t find anything fundamentally different,” she said.
Simulation – someone trying to mimic another’s penmanship – is always considered during handwriting analysis, she added.
But in this case, Osmond ruled that out.
“I did not see any sign of simulation,” she testified.
The expert witness said how difficult it is to simulate someone’s handwriting because the writer would have a tendency to revert to their own writing habits.
There would also likely be tremors – indicating stopping and starting – in the writing. Those weren’t evident either, Osmond testified.
Tippett’s lawyer attempted to qualify a handwriting expert for the defence, but the judge didn’t think she met the qualifications.
Leia Huggins is a handwriting expert with Forensic Examiners, a Toronto-based forensic examination company.
She’s been working in the field since 2014 and testified in small claims court once before.
The judge didn’t qualify her as an expert but allowed her to testify.
Huggins was only able to examine photocopies of the letters since the originals were lost.
She concluded Tippett “probably wrote” the letters and testified she couldn’t properly examine them for