Image: UNE Adjunct Professor Diana Eades, (left), was among the 80-strong audience at Skeptics In The Pub to hear Professor Helen Fraser (centre). They are pictured with forensic linguist Dr Michael Cooke who came from Sydney to hear the presentation
Injustice is inevitable when juries rely solely on police transcripts to prove that someone confessed to a crime, and responsibility for preparing transcripts should be given to trained linguistic experts rather than police.
That was one of the key messages at last night’s Skeptics In The Pub at Armidale’s Welder’s Dog Brewery attended by 80 people who braved the rain to hear a compelling presentation by linguistics expert Professor Helen Fraser.
Professor Fraser has researched forensic transcription for decades and been called as an expert witness in multiple criminal trials. She is a former UNE Senior Lecturer in Linguistics and is currently the Director of the Research Hub for Language in Forensic Evidence at the University of Melbourne.
The title of her presentation was: How misconceptions about the nature of speech cause injustice in criminal trials – and how being a little more skeptical can open a more human view of human nature.
She played real police tapes presented as evidence at criminal trials and the audience was astonished to acknowledge their own in-built bias and suggestibility.
Professor Fraser demonstrated that humans are primed to hear words suggested by the transcript, even if they are wrongly transcribed.
One jury transcript read: “I shot the prick” when the man was actually saying “I can’t breathe”.
She cited the evidence in the murder trial of Deputy Commissioner Colin Winchester who was shot dead in his driveway in 1989.
The police tape included the apparent confession: “I killed Winchester”.
However this was shown to be wrong, with a suggestion it was more likely to be the innocent words: “I kept watching her”.
Professor Fraser explained that, in major crimes, police collect many hours of recordings many of which are ambiguous and of poor quality.
She argued it was time for the courts to transfer responsibility for interpreting the recordings to trained linguistic professionals, just as police would do for other forensic evidence such as blood splatter or DNA testing.