For the Non-Lawyers among you

I am not a handwriting expert, but Sean Hannity is calling for Roy Moore to explain his inconsistencies, looks to me his accuser did that for him. Look at the 7s before and on the signature pic.twitter.com/qkypGP4FXT

— Dianna Tauer (@DiannaTauer) November 15, 2017

Check the kerning!

Going to the opposite end of the spectrum from Sen. Franken's insistence that the women alleging harassment and assault need to be listened to, we turn again to Roy Moore and his Not Ready for Prime Time Lawyers who continue to insist Beverly Nelson is a liar and a forger and not to be trusted, especially when it comes to her high school yearbook.

The claim is that Ms. Nelson copied Judge Moore's signature from a court order where she had "contact" with Judge Moore.  Once upon a time I practiced law in Travis County, Texas.  Travis County had then what's called an "open docket."  The District Court judges weren't assigned cases, they conducted hearings and trials as they were available.  This meant your case might get a hearing before several different judges before being tried by a judge who had never heard a word of argument about the case.

It sounds like they had much the same docket in Etowah County, Alabama.  Three court orders were entered in Ms. Nelson's divorce proceedings in 1999; two signed by W.D Russell, and one signed by Roy Moore.  It is possible this case was Judge Russell's, and Judge Moore signed the final order simply because Judge Russell was not available.  Or there was an open docket, and any judge available signed off on the order (which may have followed a brief hearing among lawyers and Judge Moore, but more likely was an agreed order submitted to the clerk for signature, no court time needed).  Either way, there's nothing here to indicate the parties had "contact" with either judge.

It isn't unusual at all for clients not to have 'contact' with a judge before trial.  Orders for continuances and other pre-trial matters (or setting the case for trial) are routinely signed by judges in chambers.  Indeed, I never saw a judge sign an order in open court.  If you needed a judge's signature you submitted the order to the clerk, who returned it to you later, "you" here being the lawyer.  Clients seldom attend hearings where they don't need to give evidence.  The three orders presented in the Think Progress article are classic orders that lawyers see, and clients never do.  None of those three orders would require the presence of a client (well, a continuance might, under some circumstances; but not usually).  And signing an order of dismissal means simply submitting the order to the clerk, and the clerk's office then gets one of the judges to sign it, since on an open docket one judge's signature is as good as another's. 

Roy Moore's lawyers have tried to play on everyone's ignorance of these simple facts, claiming that Beverly Nelson copied Judge Moore's signature from the one order in her first divorce action to copy it into her yearbook, a rather elaborate scheme that either means she wrote the whole note when she was 16, because she includes the name of the restaurant where she worked at the time, and then decades later went back to the court records to get a copy of Moore's signature from her divorce case;  or she remembered back to that age, imagined she'd met Moore there, and gave that story credence with her elaborate "fake" note, and this one court order she probably didn't have a copy of (I never gave my clients copies of court filings).  Could she have remembered, 18 years later, that Moore signed a document that suspended her first divorce action?  Maybe, but the odds that she ever knew it are slim and none.  I barely remember the judges I appeared before; I know my clients have no idea who signed what order, and wouldn't be able to research their file at the clerk's office to find a signature.

Considering the elaboration it takes to establish that this note in a yearbook is forged, it offends good sense to accept it as even possible, much less probable.  And I wonder about this excuse that Moore's assistant stamped his orders and put her initials there.  That's not a practice I've ever seen or been aware of, and it's notable Judge Russell didn't indicate any similar practice on the two orders he signed.

In the end none of this really means anything except these people are not ready for primetime.  Moore's lawyers seem much more concerned about this story than any of the other allegations.  That intensity is much more interesting than any of their feeble attempts to turn it back.  And in light of Sen. Franken's statement that the women coming forward "deserve to be heard and believed", it highlights the moral paucity of a man seeking public office who would allow such a defense of his actions to be made.