Forensic Psychology For Dummies (40 page)
Read Forensic Psychology For Dummies Online
Authors: David Canter
Earwitness testimony
Earwitness? Yes, you’re reading that correctly! A neglected but developing area of research into witness testimony is how a person remembers and reproduces what he hears as well as what he sees at the time of the crime. Your memory for both what you see and hear can decay rapidly, and so weaken the reliability of the accuracy of a witness’s testimony. This can be a crucial aspect, say, of recognising a voice that made offensive or threatening phone calls. How well can you identify another person’s voice? When I answer the phone I can sound very much like my son, much to the consternation of his girlfriends.
I’ve not come across any studies of witness testimony for smells yet although an awareness of smells can be important in what a victim remembers. In one rape case I was involved in, the victim said that her assailant smelled very clean. It later turned out that the assailant had just played in a football match and had probably showered shortly before attacking his victim.
Chapter 5
Exposing Liars and Detecting Deception
In This Chapter
Revealing the essentials of lying and deception
Studying documents for ciminal evidence
Although most people tell the truth a lot of the time, deceptions do occur every now and then, such as telling that little white lie, from the highest of motives, because you want to avoid hurting your best friend’s feelings. Or you may even hide the truth because life would get just too complicated if you had to explain all the details. But dishonesty isn’t the default characteristic of the majority of people in most situations.
Things are a bit different though in the world of crime and criminal investigations. You can’t assume that everyone is trying their best to tell the truth and nothing but the truth. Police investigators have to assume that suspects may try to weave a web of lies. They may deny guilt or, even more problematically for detectives and prosecutors, confess a guilt that’s false.
Filtering out the truth and detecting deception is a major challenge for any investigation. In this chapter I take a look at the nature of lying and the ways that people set out to deceive, and the tools available to help to disentangle truth from lies. I also delve into the business of interviewing criminals, and the difficulties faced when trying to get at the truth when examining documents.
Understanding the Nature of Lying
It’s not that easy to lie. (Skip to the next section to discover the difficulties.) So people lie in many different ways:
The most obvious is saying something false as if it were true.
Surprisingly, many suspects will admit to their crimes. The majority of convictions come because the culprit confesses. But you also need to understand that some suspects are
more
likely
to tell lies than tell you the truth, simply because of the type of person that they are, such as: