ABSTRACT
This chapter explores why some witnesses are believed and others are not, when they are giving evidence about crimes they have directly experienced. From the point of view of a study of wrongful imprisonment, the two obvious categories are those where prosecution witnesses do not tell the truth, but are believed; and where defence witnesses tell the truth but for one reason and another are not believed. Even where an alibi is given which appears to be largely true, it can be wrecked by the addition of untrue details which are exposed in court and discredit the entire alibi. This is what seems to have happened in the case of the man we shall call Timothy Riordan, who was convicted of robbery on rather shaky identification evidence. There are lawyers with a knowledge of the languages available to constitute a court able to hear a case through such a medium, with monoglot English-speaking witnesses’ evidence being translated into the vernacular.
