Police Officer Paul Williams Eyewitness Case
Summary of the case
The case concerns an eyewitness interview carried out by Police Officer Paul Williams on Thursday 27th September 2017. The eyewitness, 28-year-old Thomas Peters, was coming back home from the Odeon cinema on a Tuesday night shortly after 10pm when he heard loud shouting in a nearby alleyway. He there saw two men in their twenties, arguing. Thomas Peters described one of them, the aggressor, as being tall and muscly, wearing a maroon shirt and dark jeans, and having no hair. Thomas Peters claimed that the aggressor physically assaulted the other man by punching and kicking him, allegedly with his left hand, and stomping over his head. While this happened, Thomas Peters claimed to be hidden behind a wall. The witness claims …show more content…
Individual questions will be analysed and evaluated on the basis of such literature in order to provide a comprehensive account of the interview. This section will conclude that some of the questions used by police officer Paul Williams were not appropriate according to the regulation in use and that some of them might have permanently compromised the witness’s memory of the events.
The overall interviewing style used by Police Officer Paul Williams respected the ABE guidelines (Achieving Best Evidence, Ministry of Justice, 2011). This includes starting the interview with broad, open ended questions that elicit long answers and free recall. Examples of these are:
PW: So, in your words, could you tell me everything that you can remember about that incident in as much detail as you possibly can …show more content…
The Cognitive Interview (Fisher & Geiselman, 1984 cited in Geiselman et al., 1985) is a set of techniques that allow to gain a more reliable version of the facts. It consists of four open-ended instructions (‘Report everything’; mental reinstatement of context; recall in different temporal orders; change perspective) that activate memory in different ways and trigger recalling of details without having to ask large numbers of questions that risk to contaminate memory (Fisher & Geiselman 1984 cited in Geiselman et al., 1985). Geiselman et al. (1985) proved that the cognitive interview technique allows to obtain better recalling of the events, with witnesses able to recall more relevant information compared with a traditional interview method. Thus, the use of these techniques is highly
The case concerns an eyewitness interview carried out by Police Officer Paul Williams on Thursday 27th September 2017. The eyewitness, 28-year-old Thomas Peters, was coming back home from the Odeon cinema on a Tuesday night shortly after 10pm when he heard loud shouting in a nearby alleyway. He there saw two men in their twenties, arguing. Thomas Peters described one of them, the aggressor, as being tall and muscly, wearing a maroon shirt and dark jeans, and having no hair. Thomas Peters claimed that the aggressor physically assaulted the other man by punching and kicking him, allegedly with his left hand, and stomping over his head. While this happened, Thomas Peters claimed to be hidden behind a wall. The witness claims …show more content…
Individual questions will be analysed and evaluated on the basis of such literature in order to provide a comprehensive account of the interview. This section will conclude that some of the questions used by police officer Paul Williams were not appropriate according to the regulation in use and that some of them might have permanently compromised the witness’s memory of the events.
The overall interviewing style used by Police Officer Paul Williams respected the ABE guidelines (Achieving Best Evidence, Ministry of Justice, 2011). This includes starting the interview with broad, open ended questions that elicit long answers and free recall. Examples of these are:
PW: So, in your words, could you tell me everything that you can remember about that incident in as much detail as you possibly can …show more content…
The Cognitive Interview (Fisher & Geiselman, 1984 cited in Geiselman et al., 1985) is a set of techniques that allow to gain a more reliable version of the facts. It consists of four open-ended instructions (‘Report everything’; mental reinstatement of context; recall in different temporal orders; change perspective) that activate memory in different ways and trigger recalling of details without having to ask large numbers of questions that risk to contaminate memory (Fisher & Geiselman 1984 cited in Geiselman et al., 1985). Geiselman et al. (1985) proved that the cognitive interview technique allows to obtain better recalling of the events, with witnesses able to recall more relevant information compared with a traditional interview method. Thus, the use of these techniques is highly