United States v. Saadey
United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
393 F.3d 669 (6th Cir. 2005)
Russell Saadey (defendant) was charged with filing false credit applications, and the prosecution introduced his tax forms, which he admitted bore his own signature, alongside the disputed credit applications allegedly also signed by him. Rather than calling a handwriting expert, the prosecution let the jury compare the signatures on the credit applications to the authenticated tax-form signatures, over Saadey's objection; the jury convicted him, and he appealed the authentication method.
Whether a document may be authenticated as bearing a defendant's signature through a lay jury's own comparison to an already-authenticated signature, without expert handwriting testimony.