Witness Vetting: What Determines Detectives’ Perceptions of Witness Credibility?

摘要

During the course of a criminal investigation witness vetting, a detective’s process of determiningnthe credibility and weight of witness information, can lead to errors in an investigationnthat can go virtually unchallenged. Witness confidence, opportunity to view, and typenof information proffered were examined in relation to detective inferences about witnessnreliability, accuracy, and probable cause to arrest. Experiment 1 involved 39 sworn lawnenforcement officers, and experiment 2 involved 43 sworn law enforcement officers andn86 mock detectives. Participants viewed a digital recording depicting a witness describingna gas station robbery (Experiment 1) or a campus mugging (Experiment 2). Witness confidencenand detectives’ inferences about culprit information influenced the vetting processnand lent credibility to a confident witness whose accuracy was objectively unknown.nFurthermore, the evidence indicates that sworn law enforcement are comparable withnuntrained observers in their use of social inference cues (i.e. confidence) in determiningnwitness credibility; however, social inference can be assuaged by the rational, rulegoverned,ndecision framework established for witness vetting. Social inference processesninherent in the detective-witness dyad is influenced by legal procedures in vetting witnessninformation. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.