The Howland will forgery trial (''Robinson v. Mandell'') was a

U.S. The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 contiguous ...

court case in 1868 where businesswoman Henrietta "Hetty" Howland Robinson, who would later become the richest woman in America, contested the validity of the

will Will may refer to: Common meanings * Will and testament, instructions for the disposition of one's property after death * Will (philosophy), or willpower * Will (sociology) * Will, volition (psychology) * Will, a modal verb - see Shall and will ...

of her grandaunt, Sylvia Ann Howland. According to Sylvia Howland's will, half of her $2 million estate () would go to various charities and entities, the rest would be in a trust for Hetty Robinson. Robinson challenged the will's validity by producing an earlier will that left the entire estate to her, and which included a clause invalidating any subsequent wills. The case was ultimately decided against Robinson after the court ruled that the clause invalidating future wills and Sylvia's signature to it were forgeries. (No. 11,959) It is famous for the

forensic Forensic science combines principles of law and science to investigate criminal activity. Through crime scene investigations and laboratory analysis, forensic scientists are able to link suspects to evidence. An example is determining the time and ...

use of

mathematics Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...

Benjamin Peirce Benjamin Peirce (; April 4, 1809 – October 6, 1880) was an American mathematician who taught at Harvard University for approximately 50 years. He made contributions to celestial mechanics, statistics, number theory, algebra, and the philoso ...

as an

expert witness An expert witness, particularly in common law countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, and the United States, is a person whose opinion by virtue of education, training, certification, skills or experience, is accepted by the judge as ...

History

Sylvia Ann Howland died in 1865, leaving roughly half her fortune of some 2 million dollars () to various legatees, with the residue to be held in trust for the benefit of Robinson, Howland's niece. The remaining principal was to be distributed to various beneficiaries on Robinson's death. Robinson produced an earlier will, leaving her the whole estate outright. To the will was attached a second and separate page, putatively seeking to invalidate any subsequent wills. Howland's

executor An executor is someone who is responsible for executing, or following through on, an assigned task or duty. The feminine form, executrix, is sometimes used. Executor of will An executor is a legal term referring to a person named by the maker o ...

, Thomas Mandell, rejected Robinson's claim, insisting that the second page was a forgery, and Robinson sued. In the ensuing case of ''Robinson v. Mandell'',

Charles Sanders Peirce Charles Sanders Peirce ( ; September 10, 1839 – April 19, 1914) was an American scientist, mathematician, logician, and philosopher who is sometimes known as "the father of pragmatism". According to philosopher Paul Weiss (philosopher), Paul ...

testified that he had made pairwise comparisons of 42 examples of Howland's signature, overlaying them and counting the number of downstrokes that overlapped. Each signature featured 30 downstrokes and he concluded that, on average, 6 of the 30 overlapped, 1 in 5.

, Charles' father, showed that the number of overlapping downstrokes between two signatures also closely followed the

binomial distribution In probability theory and statistics, the binomial distribution with parameters and is the discrete probability distribution of the number of successes in a sequence of statistical independence, independent experiment (probability theory) ...

, the expected distribution if each downstroke was an independent event. When the admittedly genuine signature on the first page of the contested will was compared with that on the second, all 30 downstrokes coincided, suggesting that the second signature was a tracing of the first. Benjamin Peirce then took the stand and asserted that, given the independence of each downstroke, the

probability Probability is a branch of mathematics and statistics concerning events and numerical descriptions of how likely they are to occur. The probability of an event is a number between 0 and 1; the larger the probability, the more likely an e ...

that all 30 downstrokes should coincide in two genuine signatures was

\textstyle\frac

. That is one in 2,666,000,000,000,000,000,000, in the

order of magnitude In a ratio scale based on powers of ten, the order of magnitude is a measure of the nearness of two figures. Two numbers are "within an order of magnitude" of each other if their ratio is between 1/10 and 10. In other words, the two numbers are ...

of sextillions. He went on to observe:

So vast improbability is practically an impossibility. Such evanescent shadows of probability cannot belong to actual life. They are unimaginably less than those least things which the law cares not for. ... The coincidence which has occurred here must have had its origin in an intention to produce it. It is utterly repugnant to sound reason to attribute this coincidence to any cause but design.

The court ruled that Robinson's testimony in support of Howland's signature was inadmissible as she was a party to the will, thus having a

conflict of interest A conflict of interest (COI) is a situation in which a person or organization is involved in multiple wikt:interest#Noun, interests, financial or otherwise, and serving one interest could involve working against another. Typically, this relates t ...

. The statistical evidence was not called upon in judgment. The case is one of a series of attempts to introduce mathematical reasoning into the courts. '' People v. Collins'' is a more recent example.

Citations

General bibliography

* Eggleston, Richard (1983). ''Evidence, Proof and Probability'', * (No. 11,959) * * Meier, P. & Zabell, S. (1980). "Benjamin Peirce and the Howland Will", ''Journal of the American Statistical Association'', vol. 75, p. 497 * "The Howland Will Case", ''American Law Review'', vol. 4, p. 625 (1870) *

Leila Schneps Leila Schneps is an American mathematician and fiction writer at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique working in number theory. Schneps has written general audience math books and, under the pen name Catherine Shaw, has written mathe ...

and Coralie Colmez, '' Math on trial: How numbers get used and abused in the courtroom'', Basic Books, 2013. . (Ninth chapter: "Math error number 9: choosing a wrong model. The case of Hetty Green: a battle of wills"). {{DEFAULTSORT:Howland Will Forgery Trial 1868 in United States case law Document forgery Forensic statistics