Deception By the Investigating Officer in the Investigative, Interrogative, and Testimonial Processes

Deception By the Investigating Officer in the Investigative, Interrogative, and Testimonial Processes

Deception By the Investigating Officer in the Investigative, Interrogative, and Testimonial Processes

Deception By the Investigating Officer in the Investigative, Interrogative, and Testimonial Processes

Is it ethical to lie to obtain to the truth? Do the ends justify the means?

Deception is a common practice in society. Lies used in situations ranging anywhere from a son or daughter lying to his/her parents about where he/she was going that night, to a President lying to the nation about his personal relationships. Self-reporting has demonstrated that individuals tell about two lies per day and lie in one out of every four social interactions. Many ordinary people practiced at the act of lying and they may be regarded as professional liars. Lies can be told for many different reasons: for materialistic gains, psychological gains, or in order to avoid punishment (Albrechtsen, 2010).

Additionally, they can be told for the benefit of one's self or for another individual to increase the predictability in social interactions to punish another person. One area in which the implications of lying are often quite serious is in the legal system. Typically, people lie in order to protect themselves. Examples of lies told in the legal context may include criminals lie to police investigators about their whereabouts in an attempt to avoid the suspicion of the officers, lying to implicate an innocent individual and cast the suspicion away from themselves, or lying about their true identities (Meissner, 2002).

Witnesses may also lie about what they saw in order to protect someone they know. However, police investigators are not the only ones who encounter lies in the legal system. Lawyers, judges, and jurors may also find themselves in situations where they encounter someone lying to them. There are often large amounts of money, time, and even lives at stake, when individuals (e.g. police officers) rely on whether they can correctly detect if an individual is lying or telling the truth. Their judgments regarding the veracity of statements can often form the basis for their decision to pursue certain suspects or to arrest an individual, or to investigate other avenues. Once investigators form hypotheses about whom they believe is responsible, it is often difficult to change this direction of the investigation.

While this may not be the case in every situation, confirmation biases occur frequently throughout the system, making it more likely that the initial suspect will remain the focus of the investigation and be prosecuted (deTurck, 1991). This initial veracity judgment, regardless of its apparent importance at the time, can have significant implications in the future of each case. Therefore, the ability to discriminate between truthfulness and deception would be an extremely valuable asset for those involved in the legal system.

Unfortunately, research addressing the issue of human lie detection has continually demonstrated that it is a task at which humans are not particularly ...