Beliefs about suspect alibis: A survey of lay people in the United Kingdom, Israel, and Sweden

Date01 January 2020
Published date01 January 2020
DOI10.1177/1365712719873008
Subject MatterArticles
Article
Beliefs about suspect alibis:
A survey of lay people
in the United Kingdom,
Israel, and Sweden
Shiri Portnoy
Department of Psychology, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, Hampshire, UK
Lorraine Hope
Department of Psychology, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, Hampshire, UK
Aldert Vrij
Department of Psychology, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, Hampshire, UK
Karl Ask
Department of Psychology, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden
Sara Landstro
¨m
Department of Psychology, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden
Abstract
During police interviews, innocent suspects may provide unconvincing alibis due to impaired
memory processes or guilt-presumptive behaviour on behalf of the interviewer. Consequently,
innocent suspects may be prosecuted and tried in court, where lay people who serve jury duty
will assess their alibi’s credibility. To examine lay people’s beliefs and knowledge regarding
suspect alibis, and specifically about such factors that may hamper innocent suspects’ ability to
provide convincing alibis, we administered an eight-question questionnaire across the United
Kingdom (n¼96), Israel (n¼124), and Sweden (n¼123). Participants did not tend to believe
that innocentsuspects’ alibis might inadvertently include incorrectdetails, but acknowledged that
impaired memory processes may cause this. Additionally, most participants believed that a
presumption of guilt can affect how interviewers interview suspects.The findings suggest that lay
people who may serve jury duty hold somemistaken beliefs regarding alibi provision by suspects.
Keywords
alibis, innocent suspects, jury, presumption of guilt, survey
Corresponding author:
Shiri Portnoy, Department of Psychology, University of Portsmouth, King Henry Building, King Henry 1st Street, Portsmouth,
Hampshire, PO1 2DY, UK.
E-mail: shiri.portnoy@gmail.com
The International Journalof
Evidence & Proof
2020, Vol. 24(1) 59–74
ªThe Author(s) 2019
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/1365712719873008
journals.sagepub.com/home/epj
Introduction
Innocent suspects who fail to provide a convincing alibi when interviewed by the police may subse-
quently be tried in court, where their alibi may be evaluated again by jurors. Are lay members of the
public familiar with factors that may lead to an innocent suspect providing an inaccurate, incomplete or
otherwise unconvincing alibi? Using a survey, the current research sought to examine this question.
Providing a convincing alibi
When providing an alibi to a police interviewer, suspects generally attempt to convince the interviewer
of their innocence of the crime for which they are being held suspects. This process has been identified as
the generation domain of alibi provision which comprises two phases—the story phase and the valida-
tion phase (Burke et al., 2007; Olson and Charman, 2012; Olson and Wells, 2004). During the story
phase, suspects provide their alibi by reporting from memory about their actions and whereabouts during
the time of the crime. In the subsequent validation phase, suspects attempt to corroborate their alibi by
offering objects (physical evidence) or details about people (person evidence) that may account for their
presence at a certain place at a certain time during the time frame of the crime (Burke et al., 2007).
However, during both phases of the generation domain of alibi provision, innocent suspects may
provide inaccurate informationdespite being motivated to provide an accurate and,ultimately, convincing
alibi (see Kassam et al., 2009). One factor that has been found to hamper innocent suspects’ ability to
provide accurateinformation is impaired memoryprocesses—a result of the fact that innocentsuspects (as
all truthfulrememberers) must rely on their episodicand autobiographicalmemory to provide their truthful
statement (Burkeet al., 2007; Culhane et al., 2008; Olson and Wells, 2012; Strange et al.,2014). Impaired
memory processes concern, for example, the declining accessibility of event details with the passage of
time (Pertzov et al., 2017; Tourangeau, 2000). Alternatively, innocent suspects may wrongly, though
unintentionally, integrate details from memories for distinctive events into a report about an event that
never actuallytook place (i.e., memory-conjunction errors;Reinitz et al., 1992; see also Devitt et al.,2016).
In addition to memory problems that may compromise innocent suspects’ ability to provide a convin-
cing alibi, factorsemerging in the course of the interview may alsojeopardise their success with respectto
convincing the interviewer of their innocence. One such factor is the presumption of guilt with which
interviewers sometimes approachinterviews with suspects whom they have never met orwith whom they
have interacted only very briefly. Research on the effects of interviewers’ presumption of guilt on the
verbal behaviour of suspects duringinterviews is relatively new. Findings to date have shown no correla-
tion betweeninterviewers’ presumptionof guilt and suspects’ tendencyto confess or deny involvementin a
crime (Hill et al., 2008), nor have they identified evidence that presumption of guilt affects the informa-
tiveness and accuracy of innocent suspects’ alibis (Portnoyet al., 2019). However, research has shownthat
this presumption of guilt can lead interviewers to conduct more aggressive interviews with suspects and
ultimatelyincrease the probability thatthe interviewer will actuallyjudge the suspect as guilty atthe end of
the interview,irrespective of the suspect’s statement (Hill et al., 2008; Kassin et al., 2003). These findings
thus suggestthat when interviewers approachthe interview already believingthe suspect to be guilty, alibis
may become less efficient in suspects’ attempts to convince interviewers of their innocence.
Evaluating the credibility of alibis
The story phase and the validation phase of the generation domain are followed by the evaluation phase
and the ultimate evaluation phase, which comprise the believability domain (Burke et al., 2007; Olson
and Charman, 2012; Olson and Wells, 2004). In the evaluation phase, the credibility of the alibi is
evaluated, usually initially by the police. When police interviewers investigate an alibi and discover that
the suspect provided incorrect information, they may fail to attribute such inaccuracies to memory errors
(Burke et al., 2007; Dysart and Strange, 2012; Olson and Wells, 2012). Instead, unintentional
60 The International Journal of Evidence & Proof 24(1)

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