How Memory Offers Clues & Red Herrings

In the recent Brett Kavanaugh hearings, Christine Blasey Ford's testimony accusing Kavanaugh of a teenage sexual assault ignited a public discussion of the reliability of witness and victim memory of traumatic events. Many people seem to think that memory is like a videotape and that gaps undermine credibility, and also that time can erode memory to the point that mistaken identity is likely. Unfortunately, the public discussion is pumping out more misinformation than scientific and experiential fact. While some Kavanaugh backers suggested Ford's story was probably a case of mistaken identity, mistaken identity is unlikely in cases where the perpetrator is known to the victim or witness as in Ford's case. Mistaken identification most frequently occurs when the perpetrator is a stranger, when the accused is of a different race than the victim or witness, and when a weapon is used so that the victim/witness naturally focuses on the threat (knife or gun, for example) rather than the threatening person. Other commentators suggested that the gaps in Ford's memory undermined her credibility for them. Yet scientific research shows that what the brain encodes and is able to retrieve about a trauma is naturally spotty. Specifics such as exact location, date and time (unless tied to a memorable marker such as a holiday or work routine or well-known place) are commonly blurry, while other details are burned into the mind by intense negative emotion and stress. It is also true that memory can be manipulated, that people may fill in missing details from other memories or even be influenced by police and witness cues to create a complete scenario. As a result, testimony with gaps in memory can actually be more reliable, while a detailed story confidently asserted can be taken with a grain of salt. Plus, excess alcohol consumption (as alleged for Kavanaugh and his friend) can black out memory of events even if the person never passes out. For a mystery writer, characters' memories of traumatic events are important for creating both vital clues and red herrings. The starting point of many plots, especially cold case detective stories, involves witnesses and victims with gaps in their memories and conflicting accounts. Plots also make use of confident testimony that turns out to be misleading. Because mystery authors need to make plot twists realistic and believable, they need to avoid the kind of misguided assumptions about memory and trauma currently bandied about by politicians and TV talk chatter. For an easy-to-understand expert take, see https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/how-reliable-are-the-memories-of-sexual-assault-victims/

Mysteries From the Viewpoint of a Witness

Most murder mysteries focus on the victim, the killer and the sleuth (detective, PI, prosecutor, etc.). But there is a third group of essential characters: the witnesses. Authors present witnesses and their narratives to the readers for evaluation based on the same elements used by legal teams. First, expertise and experience are key to witness credibility, ranging from specialized education to ordinary familiarity. Witnesses are also evaluated in terms of consistency, meaning both consistent telling of his or her story by the witness and consistency with input from other witnesses. A certain level of detail makes a witness more believable, too--as long as details don't vary with each telling. Readers (and jurors) also judge reliability by witness "demeanor," or a gut "feel" evoked by dress, body language, speaking style, and assumptions (perhaps wrong) about social, racial or ethnic background. Finally, perceived "neutrality" counts in how much weight readers are going to give to a witness; readers are more likely to suspect self-serving bias if the witness has a clear stake in the outcome, such as financial gain or a personal relationship. Witnesses don't have to be supporting cast members in mystery fiction. Authors can choose to unfold a story from the viewpoint of a witness for a number of good reasons: to mislead with partial or unreliable narration, to hide or highlight the reasoning of the detective, or to create empathy and emotional tension. A recent example of this is The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins, in which the main character Rachel witnesses a shocking scene involving a couple she has observed during her daily train commute past their neighborhood, but her emotional problems, drinking and personal bias cause the police (and the reader) to question her reliability as a narrator. Another example where witnesses take center stage is Agatha Christie's Murder in Retrospect, in which Hercule Poirot solves the 16-year-old murder of a philandering painter, for which his wife was convicted, based solely on narratives of five witnesses. If you want a witness protagonist plus romance, check out The Witness by Nora Roberts, about a young woman who flees after witnessing a Russian mob killing and emerges years later in a small Ozarks town as a quirky freelance programmer protected by high-tech security systems, guard dog and firearms--and so she naturally attracts the sexy local police chief! Unfortunately, fictional justice does not necessarily mimic reality in terms of credible witnesses. Check out these 10 famous lying witnesses, and the miscarriages of justice that resulted from their false testimony: http://listverse.com/2015/08/04/10-people-who-brazenly-lied-on-the-witness-stand/