A Statement Analytic Approach To Deception Detection In Criminal Witness Statements

Detecting deception is always a hot issue in the legal and psychological fields of western academic arena. The veracity and deception of criminal witness statement is of crucial importance to decide whether a case can be resolved or not, and to the admission of evidence in court. In criminal interrogating period of China, it is of much importance to detect deception or veracity with an accessible method. However, few Chinese researchers have devoted themselves to the study of deception detection in a linguistic approach. Based on the achievements of previous studies, the present study aims to, with the help of a statement analytic approach, examine the linguistic and structural features of Chinese witness statements in legal settings for predictive value in determining the likelihood of veracity or deception. On the basis of prior studies, the current research proposes a list of eight indicators for detecting deception or veracity in Chinese witness statements, with four of them are hypothesized to detect veracity and the other four indicators hypothesized to detect deception. The present study elaborates on those eight indicators through comparative case studies, and a further frequency calculation shows the most frequently used indicators in Chinese witness statements. On the one hand, statistical results show that among those four indicators for detecting a true statement, Coherence is the most significant, and Amount of Details and Perceptual Information are less frequent. On the other hand, in terms of the four indicators for detecting a deceptive statement, Negation is of the most obvious, followed by Equivocation and Prologue. The aforesaid most frequently used six indicators for detection—Coherence, the Amount of Details, Perceptual Information, Negation, Equivocation and Prologue—are therefore concluded and will contribute to the detective practice in Chinese witness statements. As a consequence, the police officers may, in interrogating witnesses, pay much attention to the aforesaid six indicators, which will benefit the case resolution. Nevertheless, this research encounters many difficulties, among which data collection is most difficult because of the confidentiality of criminal witness statements in China. Although the author tries to overcome such limitation and put much effort in data collection, however, the quantity and quality of the data is still not satisfying, which may influence the objectivity of the research results and the author hopes that this problem may be resolved by later researchers, which may further accelerate the application of forensic linguistics in the legal practice of China.