Robert A. Leonard, Ph.D. (Columbia, 1982) Lead Researcher, Robert Leonard Associates

Professor Leonard (robert.leonard@hofstra.edu) is Chair of Department and Director of the Forensic Linguistics Project at Hofstra University.

Leonard’s linguistic specialty of Forensic Linguistics applies the science of linguistic investigation to issues of U.S. law. Forensic Linguistics augments legal analysis by applying rigorous, scientifically accepted principles of analysis to legal evidence like contracts, letters, confessions, and recorded speech.

Expert Witness:  Leonard has been qualified as an Expert in Linguistics in NY Supreme Court, in  PA State Court (under Frye), and as Expert in Linguistics and  Sociolinguistics in Federal District Court in Newark, NJ (under Daubert).  He is the only Forensic Linguist to have been admitted to the Expert Panel of the 18B Assigned Counsel Plan of the City of New York.

Consulting and lecturing:  Dr. Leonard’s language consulting clients have included the FBI, Pennsylvania State Police, NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force, New Jersey Office of Attorney General, US Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of NY, New Yorker Magazine, ABC-TV's Investigative Unit, and law firms that specialize in both civil and criminal cases.

He has trained FBI and international agents in Forensic Linguistic techniques at the FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit-1 (Counter-terrorism and Threat Assessment) headquarters in Quantico, and has participated with the FBI to give training in Quantico and NY to U.S. Secret Service, NYPD, U.S. Park Police, National Park Service, CIA, New Jersey State Park Police, New Jersey State Troopers, Dept. of Homeland Security, Federal Reserve Police, UN, FBI-NYFO, and ATF.  At Hofstra University, he teaches a special graduate section of Forensic Linguistics for FBI Supervisory Special Agents.
Leonard delivered the plenary address at the 2006 Ohio Attorney General’s Conference on Law Enforcement, and addresses groups such as the North Shore-LIJ medical association, the Nassau County Bar Association, the Association of Threat Assessment Professionals in New York, and their annual meeting in California.

He has been consulted in some well-known cases such as the Taye Diggs-Idina Menzel arson threat letters, the McGuire “suitcase” murder (in which he prepared testimony to bolster the FBI expert), the Alvarez spy case (in which he prepared testimony against FBI interrogators), the Hummert murder (about which Forensic Files filmed “A Tight Leash”), and the John Karr episode of  the JonBenet Ramsey murder (in which Leonard’s findings presaged those of the DNA tests: no evidence of links.)
A member of the International Association of Forensic Linguists, Leonard has testified and consulted for both prosecution and defense in criminal cases of murder, espionage, and other felonies, and in civil cases of plagiarism, libel, malpractice and the meaning of contracts. 

Media:  Leonard has been interviewed on language by ABC’s Eyewitness News, the Washington Times, USA Today, the New York Times, WCBS and WINS Newsradios, the New York Daily News, Newsday, the Associated Press, and radio stations throughout the US and Canada; interviews have additionally appeared in the Dallas Morning News, Mainichi Daily News (Japan), New York Law Journal, Washington Post, and on WNBC, MSNBC, and CNN. 
Court TV’s Hollywood Heat filmed a special segment on him, and an episode of Forensic Files, “A Tight Leash,” features his testimony in the Hummert murder case tried in 2006.  Writer Kathy Reichs, forensic anthropologist and producer of the TV series Bones (based on her life) includes a character based on Leonard in her latest Temprance Brennan novel, the bestseller “Bones to Ashes.”

Education:  A Fulbright Fellow for his Ph.D. research, Leonard received his B.A. from Columbia College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and graduated with honors, and his M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. from Columbia Graduate School, where he was a Faculty Fellow.

In the arts:  Dr. Leonard may well be the only Fulbright Fellow to have performed at Woodstock.  While in college he co-founded and led the rock group Sha Na Na, and with them opened for Jimi Hendrix at the Woodstock Festival.  Hendrix had recruited Sha Na Na to Woodstock.  Leonard appears in the recent documentary “The Road to Woodstock” introducing the retrospective DVD “Jimi Hendrix Live at Woodstock.”  Leonard also performed on television's Tonight Show, at the Fillmores East and West, and in the recently released “Festival Express” film with Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead. 

Field Work:  In addition to his work in forensic linguistics, Leonard researched and worked for a total of eight years in Africa and Southeast Asia, living in traditional tribal societies, Islamic societies, and Confucian and Buddhist societies.  He spent six months of a recent sabbatical studying in Thailand, Laos and Burma, and remains active in research on the semantic structure of the African Bantu language Swahili, a language with 13 noun classes, the equivalent of a language like Spanish having 13 genders.  Deep experience in the world’s languages can give a linguist increased insight into the possibilities within any single language, like English, for it affords perspective on the range of processes human language can manifest.

Forensic Linguistics:  For over 25 years, Dr. Leonard, a member of the International Association of Forensic Linguists, has applied the science of linguistics to a wide range of legal issues such as disputed authorship, libel, forgery, plagiarism, the meaning of contracts, and has used linguistic analysis in investigations and litigation in cases of murder, threatened violence and espionage. 

*Photo by Phil Marino for the New York Times