Impostors tending towards the wild: Purposes of authorship analysis and a specific impostors method in the Karvounakis terrorism case

Abstract

Authorship analysis can be used at different stages of a criminal case, including the initial investigation (i.e. to narrow down the search for a suspect), to support a search warrant application, and to provide evidence for a criminal prosecution. Each stage has its own complexities and pressures, requiring some flexibility in the type of method applied. Indeed, it is not unusual in such cases for the conditions to be far from ideal, adding to the complexities of the particular stage of the case. For instance, cases often involve texts that are very short and comparison data that is not within the same genre as the questioned text. In some cases, there are strict security constraints, meaning that some tools and software are prohibited and that the forensic linguist must work alone. HMA v Nikolaos Karvounakis is a domestic terrorism case, which required authorship analyses at all three stages. Each stage had a particular purpose and specific security constraints and complexities, which influenced the kinds of authorship analyses employed. The final stage led to the development of the Specific Impostors method, which is variation of the General Impostors method. This article describes the case history, the methods employed and the outcome of their application to the data and concludes with reflections on the case and the methodology.