H567/03 Section B Option 2 - Evidence from witnesses and suspects
An interview account can reveal what happened, suggest new enquiries or challenge an early explanation. Witnesses and suspects have different roles, but neither role guarantees that an account is accurate or inaccurate. Psychology helps examine how information is obtained and how it should be weighed.
Collecting a witness account
A witness must first encode an event, retain information and retrieve it during an interview. Attention, viewing conditions, delay and later information can affect these stages. Memory is reconstructive: recalling an event involves using stored information and existing expectations, rather than playing a perfect recording. Confidence alone does not show that the information was encoded accurately.
An interviewer should begin with an open invitation to describe what happened, allow an uninterrupted account and then clarify details with non-leading questions. 'What did you notice about the vehicle?' leaves the answer open. 'How fast was the red car speeding?' supplies colour and speed assumptions that may enter the later account. Separating witnesses before detailed discussion reduces the risk of adopting another person's description.
Record the account, the questions and the conditions in which the witness observed the event. Distinguish directly observed information from inference or material learned later. Rapport and suitable communication can make participation easier, while reassurance should not supply an answer. The next lesson develops retrieval techniques through the cognitive interview.
Using witness evidence cautiously
A description can guide searches for a vehicle, person or location. An account of an event can also be compared with CCTV, timings, physical traces and other independently obtained material. Agreement is useful when sources are independent; several witnesses repeating a shared social-media description may supply one common source rather than several confirmations.
Recall of an event and recognition of a suspect are different tasks. Improving the amount reported in an interview does not automatically improve choosing a person from an identification procedure. A vivid or confident account can contain mistakes. Ask how the account was produced and whether later feedback or repeated questioning could have altered it.
In an illustrative case, a witness saw a van briefly at dusk. Their first recorded account says 'a pale van'; a later account says 'white' after reading a report online. The initial description can still guide an enquiry, but the later colour certainty should be checked against its source and the poor viewing conditions. It should not be treated as independent corroboration of the online report.
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