Rebuttal Witnesses Testify About Documents in Freshwater Hearing

The following testimonies took place 3:31 p.m.—4:41 p.m. on 6/07/10.

Mount Vernon Board of Education attorney David Millstone brought two experts as rebuttal witnesses to testify about documents in the John Freshwater hearing.

Harold F Rodin

Harold F. Rodin, a certified questioned documents examiner, said that the handwriting at the top of the school board’s exhibit number 91— “Reaching for the Sky”—was made by Freshwater.

Rodin based his conclusion on what he said were similarities between several of the letters in the document questioned and in the sample of Freshwater’s handwriting he was given.

The magazine article “Reaching for the Sky” was published in 1988 in Science World. The writing on the document contained references to the biblical story of the Tower of Babel.

Rodin admitted that he did not examine the original document that had the handwriting. He said that when an original is available it is preferred but is not necessary.

The original of the article was found in storage after an anonymous tipster sent a letter to Freshwater. No writing, however, was on the top of the article.

When Freshwater and his attorney, R. Kelly Hamilton, were able to review the storage room full of stuff, earlier this year, they found multiple copies of the article. Those copies—except for a photocopy that was already labeled “Bd 91”—did not contain the writing at the top.

(Multiple copies of the article, minus the handwriting, were found with Freshwater’s classroom stuff.)

For more information, see the section “Reaching for the Sky” in the article “John Freshwater Testifies About ‘Truckload’ of Information.”

Rodin said that he could not tell whether the document was used in the public school classroom.

John Liptak

John Liptak, a computer forensic expert, testified about the authenticity of several emails.

One of the emails—school board exhibit number 22—had been described by a previous witness, Ricky Warren, as looking like it was altered.

The email was a reply by Warren to an email sent through Freshwater’s account. The content of the email is about Warren coming to speak at a Fellowship of Christian Athletes meeting. Freshwater’s daughter, Jordan, previously testified that she was the one who invited Warren to speak at FCA.

Liptak said that he observed a local IT person restore a November 2009 backup of the school’s email system. He said he then took a copy back to his lab and examined the data.

Liptak said that he found a copy of Warren’s email within Freshwater’s account that matched that of the copy used as an exhibit in the hearing.

(A copy of the email was found among Freshwater’s classroom stuff already labeled as “BOARD EXHIBIT – 22.”)

Upon questioning from Hamilton, Liptak said that the electronic copy does not have a three-hole punch along the left margin.

Liptak said that his company probably also obtained a copy of the hard drive on Freshwater’s classroom computer but that he was not involved in that task.

Liptak said that he did not examine who had access to Freshwater’s account.