How should we treat witnesses in trials?

You may have heard of the complaints about how the family of a murdered girl, Milly Dowler, were treated very badly by the defence lawyers at the trial of her murderer Levi Bellfield.

About 25 years ago, I witnessed similar behaviour by defence lawyers in a trial where I was on the jury. The judge apologised for the treatment of the witness on behalf of the British nation.

During his defence, the lawyer accused a Japanese woman who was the victim of pick pocketing on the London Underground of sleeping with four of the other witnesses. It was appalling. And there was no need for it.

His way of trying to prove his client’s innocence was to discredit the witness. All he did was to turn everyone against him.

The truth

According to the research, the best way of finding out if someone is telling the truth is to ask him or her the right questions.

In this case, asking a person to tell you what the events were in reverse order is most effective. I feel sure if someone had questioned his defendants that way, it would have been obvious they were lying.

It’s a bit macho

Unfortunately some people, probably those who have watched too many bad cop films, still seem to think that the bullying tactics are the most effective.

Maria Hartwig and John Jay of College of Criminal Justice in New York showed that in just three hours of training they could improve the success rate of interrogators at spotting lies from 56% to 85%.

It’s time we started using these techniques that mainly involve the skilful use of questions not just in the courtroom, but also in job interviews, particularly for the most senior positions. 

So often untrustworthy or incompetent people have ended up with a lot of power simply because no one asked the right questions.