(Examiner) Q. Have you examined the "prophecy letter" in question?
(Expert) A. Yes.
Q. Does a handwriting expert's familiarity with the handwriting
system have an effect on the expert's ability to accurately assess the sample?
A. Yes, of course.
Q. How many letters in Tibetan handwriting have you examined before this assignment?
A. None
Q. How many
other prophecy letters have you examined in your career?
A. None.
Q. Do the circumstances under which someone writes a document, such as physical health, purpose of the document, environment in which the
document was written, affect the details of the handwriting of that person?
A. Yes.
Q. What familiarity do you have with the conditions under which a "prophecy letter" of the Sixteenth Karmapa was
written?
A. None.
Q. Are you familiar with the circumstances under which any Karmapa prepares such a prophecy letter?
A. No.
Q. Let's turn to another area with which you might be more familiar, and
examine the following hypothetical: you are given an allegedly forged check to examine. The check is supposed to be evidence of payment in January, 1990 by a payor who died in February 1990. The estate of the payor
believes that the check was forged by the payee in February and backdated, and hence is not valid. The payee claims he received the check in January, before the payor died. Do you understand me so far?
A. Yes.
Q. Assume the forgery is perfect in terms of the handwriting, but you find something else out, as follows: In looking at the check, you notice a coded notation on the check. Assume for purposes of the hypothetical
that you can show the notation was written at the same time the check was written. When you unscramble the code, you discover that the notation means "X died February 12, 1990 at 2:00 a.m.", which in fact
was the exact time and date of death. Would you consider the relevance of this notation to be part of your job in determining the authenticity of the check?
A. Yes.
Q. Would you not consider this notation
conclusive evidence that the writer of the check knew -- at the time he wrote the check -- that the payor had already died?
A. Yes.
Q. So would you then consider the coded notation evidence that the check was
written after the death of the payor and is thus a forgery?
A. Yes.
Q. What if the payee provided evidence that the payor had a vision, in January when he allegedly wrote the check, of the impending date and
time of his "scheduled" February death, and hence wrote the notation on the check? Would that change your opinion of the validity of the check?
A. No, since such "prescience" is a scientific
impossibility, I would know conclusively that the check was forged . . .
Q. Let's return to the prophecy letter. Before you examined it, did someone tell you that, if valid, it contained a statement by the
Karmapa made in the early 1980's containing a detailed description of someone "scheduled" to be born years later?
A. Yes.
Q. Did you credit this explanation as a valid scientific possibility so that
your examination of the authenticity of the handwriting sample was dispassionate and unbiased?
A. Well -- I think I can be objective even if I do not accept that possibility.
Q. By the way, sir, how much are
you getting paid to testify here today?
A. US $300 an hour.
Q. And how many hours have you put in?
A. Well, I was hired many years ago, and had to travel to India a lot and familiarize myself with the
handwriting samples, so I have put in 500 hours.
Q. So you have been paid US$ 150,000?
A. Yes.
