Week 8 - Interviewing Techniques for Forensic Investigation

During trial, the prosecution may ‘press’ on certain witnesses to provide a confession to the court. However, if such confession is provided by duress, it is possible to argue for inadmissible evidence, the court has the power to dismiss the witness’s oral evidence which could potentially cause an error of law (Davies, 2002).

There are three interviewing techniques that could be applied in order to minimise problems as mentioned:

1. REID – a guided model on lying detection and psychological persuasion (Rollnick & Miller 1995);

2.  PEACE – Provides a framework for interviewing witnesses; essentially providing a ‘conversation management’ approach and locating the witnesses’ inconsistencies; and

3. Motivational Interview - “A directive, client-centred counselling style for eliciting behavioural change by helping clients to explore and resolve ambivalence”.

Additionally, there are court rules that disallows how questions are framed when questioning witnesses for example, closed questions. The court disallows interviewers or interrogators to guide the witness to answers where they could potentially hurt their credibility.

Much evidence has suggested that a humanitarian approach is more likely to result in a confession. Thus, this should be an alternative approach as this could first, limit the confusion of interrogation and interviewing. Moreover, this could also assist the court to determine whether the confession was orchestrated by duress.

In my working experience at a law firm, we usually encourage our clients to tell us everything about their legal dispute matter whether it prejudices them or not. Although they may be disadvantaged, this allows us to provide support on that issue and encourage the court to disregard it.

Reference

Davies, G. L. (2002).  The Exclusion of Evidence Illegally or Improperly Obtained: An Unsatisfactory Answer to an Unstated Question.  Journal of Financial Crime, 9, 224 – 248.  doi: 10.1108/eb026023

Rollnick, S., & Miller, R.W. (1995. What is MI? Retrieved from http://www.motivationalinterview.net/clinical/whatismi.html