De betrouwbaarheid van getuigenverklaringen: Drie rechtspsychologische analyses van het recht

This dissertation concerns the legal framework with regard to the reliability of witnesses in Dutch criminal law from a legal psychology perspective. Witnesses are an important source of information for criminal judges, for coming to an evidentiary decision as well as motivating their assessment of a witness statement. However, legal psychological studies have sufficiently demonstrated that witness testimonies are fallible. Human memory is for instance prone to errors and biases, and witnesses may deliberately lie. If a judge bases his evidentiary decision on a false witness testimony, it may lead to an incorrect judgment, either because a guilty accused is acquitted or because an innocent accused is convicted. In view of this, the question arises how the legal framework and the legal safeguards for the use of reliable witness testimony can be valued considering the legal psychological insights on witness statements. After all, much psychological research has been done on the reliability of witnesses, but it is unclear whether these insights find their way to the courtroom and into judgments. Therefore, this dissertation describes the relevant legal psychological insights for the judicial assessment of the reliability of a witness statement, and analyses the extent in which these insights reflected in the law and case law. The multidisciplinary research contains three sub-studies. In each sub-study, the legal psychological analysis has been conducted with regard to a specific legal field: eyewitness identification procedure, the preparation of witness statements and the application of the Dutch evidentiary minimum rule for witness statements (corroboration rule). In a concluding chapter, it is described how the described legal psychological insights might be incorporated into the legal framework of each of these sub-studies through a more risk based approach.