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2 - Questions Unanswered: International Witnesses and the Information Unconveyed

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2010

Nancy A. Combs
Affiliation:
College of William and Mary, Virginia
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Summary

The defense witness Celestino Dasibere appeared to the Court to be completely confused and unreliable: the transcript of the hearing is a cold medium and can not convey the sense of displacement and incapability to express intelligible concepts that affected the witness. Mr. Dasibere looked as a source of inextricable untrustworthiness and smoky ideas. Apart from the confession of the unreliability of his memory, the witness repeatedly showed to base his recollection of the facts on the quick sands of a fragile memory, ready to affirm one concept and to negate it immediately after. There's a sense of consternation left after hearing such witness: the Court doesn't want to base any factual finding on his words.

– Prosecutor v. Francisco Perreira, Special Panel for Serious Crimes, Case No. 34/2003, Judgement at 25 (Apr. 27, 2005)

International criminal trials employ Western-style criminal procedures that presuppose a smooth flow of questions and answers between counsel and witnesses. In particular, it is expected that, in response to counsel's questioning, eyewitnesses will convey the details of the events they witnessed in a form that the fact finder can both understand and critically evaluate. To be sure, clear communication between witnesses and fact finders is not always realized, even in domestic cases. Trials involving medical malpractice, product liability, and patent claims – to provide only a few examples – frequently feature testimony about scientific or technological issues that are difficult for witnesses to clearly explain and for fact finders to satisfactorily grasp.

Type
Chapter
Information
Fact-Finding without Facts
The Uncertain Evidentiary Foundations of International Criminal Convictions
, pp. 21 - 62
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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