Tapes, transcripts and trials

Abstract

This article addresses a serious, but currently unacknowledged, problem of evidential consistency regarding police-suspect interview evidence. It sheds light on flaws in current criminal procedure through the lens of linguistics, focusing on key stages of currently accepted practice which fly in the face of what linguists have long known about language. It demonstrates that, in stark contrast to the strict principles of preservation applied to physical evidence, interview data go through significant transformation between their creation in the interview room and their presentation in the courtroom, especially through changes in format between written and spoken text. It argues that, despite the safeguards provided by PACE 1984, there is nonetheless a level of routine distortion and contamination unintentionally built into the current system of presenting police interviews as evidence in England and Wales.

A Framework for Deciding How to Create and Evaluate Transcripts for Forensic and Other Purposes

“…The fact that they are typically employed by police departments, or by agencies that undertake extensive police work, means they usually have contextual understanding of police and legal processes in general, and sometimes of specific cases. Nevertheless, various kinds of error are common, as well documented by Haworth (2018) and Komter (2019) -confirming that difficulties in understanding recorded speech are not limited to poor quality audio (Section 4.1.2).…”

“…Upon institution of compulsory recording, the large workforce needed for transcription was mobilised hastily and under severe cost constraints, often coopting practitioners whose primary skills and responsibilities lay elsewhere. Unfortunately it was not till decades later that it was discovered that their transcripts sometimes contained egregious but undetected errors, with potential to affect justice (Haworth, 2018;Komter, 2019;Richardson et al, 2022).…”

“…Then prosecution and defence solicitors use it, in preparing their cases, as a record of the information obtained during the interview. Next, if the interview is used as evidence in court, barristers quote from the transcript, using their own intonation and speaking style (Haworth, 2018). The final, and arguably most important, end-user, is the jury, who use the content of the interview, in combination with other evidence, to reach a verdict of guilty or not guilty.…”

“…The focus of the present paper is on transcripts used in legal contexts -specifically on transcripts of court proceedings, police interviews and covert recordings, as used in Australian and UK jurisdictions. As will be seen, while transcripts of court proceedings are mostly handled well (though with important exceptions), transcripts of interviews and covert recordings show systemic problems known to create a threat to justice (see Bucholtz, 2009;French and Fraser, 2018;Haworth, 2018).…”

Sequencing statements: using behaviour sequence analysis with statement analysis to indicate deception

“…Richardson et al (2022) note that while transcripts from police-suspect audio/visual recordings are useful and near-accurate representations of the original context, transcription may be limited due to several reasons: distortion from audio/visual recordings and that transcribers lack appropriate training and guidance, leading to inaccuracies or faulty practice (e.g. ignoring pauses in a statement) (Haworth, 2018). Though the accuracy of the statements used cannot be fully guaranteed, where possible, the authors obtained original, verbatim statements originating from legitimate government websites.…”