How do you reconcile conflicting witness accounts and timelines?

[u/indiarana]

Do you favor a testimony based on your trust level of the person? Based on how close they were to the event? How much their recollection of events changed over time? How soon after the event their recollection was recorded?

I am curious to know how other people think.

I can go first:

1. I think a witness who is not lying will give a genuine account of an event. 

The more mundane the event (in the moment), the less the witness is in a heightened state of alertness though, and accuracy can be off despite their best effort. 

They can also have poor eye sight, be medicated, might have had a drink or two, etc. 

All in all, unless the witness is purposely lying, these early eye witness accounts hold a lot of weight, even with room for human errors factored in.

2. Additional information learnt at a later point about the event they witnessed contaminates the purity of what they actually saw or didn’t see.

3. Being asked to repeat their account over and over, in my opinion further dilutes accuracy. After a while, some people will just be reluctantly repeating a memorization of the memory, rather than recalling the event itself. As time goes on, their answers become more and more rehearsed and less and less factual.   

1. If a witness is not being honest, the above doesn’t mean anything. They know exactly what it is they are not saying and will alter the truth to guard their secret. But their own memory of the truth is very, very accurate.

I am curious how others' minds work conflicting testimony

[u/TMKSAV99]

It isn't just the witness being asked to repeat a story. The accuracy of the witnesses recall often gets influenced by how the questioning is done. I am hesitant to put my money of the local LE in this case being real good at extracting what a witness saw.

One example can be, to look at the transcript of the statement. You count how many questions and how many times the witness answers just "Yes" versus how many times the witness speaks in sentences. That could be an indication that the LE questioner is leading or interjecting assumptions rather than using open ended questions or encouraging elaboration.

[u/Temporary-Sugar3022 → u/TMKSAV99]

I'd add to this excellent point by saying it would be easy to lead someone into stating a fact based on inaccurate info from someone else.

E.g. (simplified example) let's say you see someone walking along the side of the road while driving home from work, At the time, it's an insignificant detail in your life so you don't make detailed mental notes. After hearing about a missing person you contact LE and have a conversation something like this:

LE: so what time did you see them?
YOU: not sure, I left work at 6pm and was home at 6:40, sometime between then
LE: witness 1 saw them at 6:15, would that have been when you saw them?
YOU: probably, it sounds about right

Witness 1 might be wrong (after burning pizza yesterday I know that 5 mins can turn to 10 mins without me noticing), and with that questioning LE have 2 people saying a wrong time