Friends of the Forensic Science Club, this week we present the paper “The Concept of Lie and its Identification in Criminal Proceedings” by Antonov, I. O.; Burganova, G. V. and Nasyrova, Y. M. (2021), in which authors expose a general vision of deception and its concept and how this matter is explored in a forensic environment.
This week we will talk about deception, in a paper which is closely related to our Nonverbal Communication Club.
We already know that police forces’ work is aimed at the timely and quick detection of crime. That is why it is important not only the identification of these criminal acts, but also knowing who is guilty and avoid them to run away from the criminal consequences derived from their behavior.
One way of avoiding this, is presenting false testimony during an interrogatory and, moreover, in face-to-face confrontations.
This happens commonly, and, obviously, complicates the forensic process. Makes it difficult to collect evidence and expose those responsible for the criminal case.
Due to the importance of recognizing this kind of fake declarations and the effects for people of accepting criminal consequences or not, authors revise the lie concept and how it is investigated in a forensic environment.
Regarding a lie definition, authors point out this as one of them: “a conscious incorrect statement that serves to achieve certain goals through deceit”.
Moreover, according to numerous authors, three characteristics of deception would exist. First would be the consciousness, a person knows that his or her statement is untrue; second, the intention to deceive another person is mandatory; third, the person pursues certain motives and goals by communicating false information, in particular, he or she seeks benefit from avoiding the negative consequences of the situation.
Besides, according to other authors, we could distinguish between an active lie and a passive lie.
For instance, in a criminal environment, proportionate false testimony to who is interrogating us, knowing that it is not true, would be an active lie. On the contrary, passive lie would simply be to conceal some information about the case.
Due to how complex is the phenomenon, and knowing that there are so many factors involved, a great effort is required by authorities when it comes about investigate how to discern in forensic environments between the truth and a lie.
Authors start to mention some of the techniques used for this.
For instance, video recording makes it possible to expose the person who is being interrogated, to record the content of the investigative action and its dynamics. Plus, it is useful to demonstrate that no violence or coaction has existed against interrogated people.
The use of video footage is very useful if we want to detect false testimony. One of the reasons is that, with a video, we could analyze the whole meeting the times it is required.
Audio recording would be also recommended for various reasons. Firstly, it would be possible to infer the emotional state of the person being questioned through his or her intonation, the volume of his or her voice and other prosodic factors.
And, besides, it can be used to compare and look for contradictions in case the person’s testimony changes with the time.
The observation method is also used in the process of detecting false testimony. It allows us to infer the emotions and the psychological state of the person involved through nonverbal and verbal communication. It is a method used commonly by the scientific community.
These methods have shown their effectivity following the idea that when a person lies, also experiments some psychophysiological changes because he or she is going through an intense emotional state.
This is a recurrent idea that many authors have worked with: they bear in mind that, with deception, a cognitive effort comes, whose consequences are observable.
It is worthwhile saying that investigating lies from an empirical perspective in the forensic environment is something that each day more authors are turning their efforts to.
They pay attention to prosodic elements, gestures, facial expressions, body movements…
Plus, an adequate diagnosis and prediction about the psychological state of the person, his or her temperament and character, makes it possible to assume the line in which this person’s future behavior would go in a particular situation, such as the interrogatory.
Recognizing and overcoming lies in testimonies continues to be one of the main tasks of an investigator when studying a criminal case.
In fact, more and more attention is being paid to scientifically supported contributions from leading authors on the subject.
However, authors comment that there is still a very long way to go, and resources must continue to be invested to discover more about lie detection techniques and how they can be applied to the forensic and criminal field.
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