Joint Construction of ‘Facts’ in Court: A Case Study of Microscopic Communication

Eyewitness testimony is generated through communication between the examiner and non-examiner (eyewitness) in interrogation rooms or public courts. In this analysis, the authors have studied the ‘fact-generating’ process microscopically, and the issue of credibility in testifying from one's experience. Specifically, they examined the Kabutoyama case, in which it took more than 20 years to render a final verdict of not guilty. They closely examined the credibility of testimony made by a key witness in the case. After analysing the testimony both qualitatively and quantitatively, they observed several characteristics in the witness-examiner exchanges and consider that non-empirical eyewitness testimony is a product of witness-examiner interactions. This paper is based on a research project carried out to report on expert opinion regarding credibility of eyewitness testimony. Part of the results of this project have already been published by Mori and Ohashi (1997).