With great regularity, recognitions by an investigating officer are introduced as evidence in a criminal case. An official report then states that the investigating officer recognised the suspect for 100% on camera images, for example. The recognition is then often substantiated with little specificity. Often the recognition is based on generalities, such as recognised by posture, appearance or hairstyle. General, because everyone has a posture, appearance and hairstyle. Because investigating officers declare on oath of office, the court will not easily assume that the investigating officer is lying. But to err is human. This brings us to the question: to what extent are such recognisations reliable and usable as evidence?\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Types of recognitions\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
When assessing the reliability of a recognition by an investigating officer, a distinction must first be made as to the type of recognition.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
The first type of recognition concerns the situation where the investigating officer knows the suspect well from previous encounters. To assess the reliability of such recognisations, a number of factors are important, such as the intensity and frequency of previous encounters, how recent the last contact was and how the recognition came about.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Recognitions of the first type are more likely to be considered reliable. After all, knowing someone well sometimes requires very little information to recognise someone. That it is not always possible to explain in detail what someone is recognised by, is also because recognition is a so-called holistic process. This means that faces are often recognised by the whole face or body and\/or the way they move, and not by one specific feature.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
The second type of recognition concerns recognising persons the investigating officer has not seen before. This involves, for example, recognising suspects during interrogation while viewing the camera images beforehand or recognition by comparing the suspect with the person in the images. In this type of recognition, the quality of the images, whether the images are moving or stills, and prior knowledge play a major role. Here, the reliability of the recognition requires finding out whether the recognition was made correctly or whether it was influenced by external factors. For example, because there was a suspicion for other reasons that the suspect could be seen in the images.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Recognitions as evidence\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Thus, a recognition is not simply usable in evidence, but this is where the defence has an active role to play. Thus, it is important to know why and on what basis an official believes he can recognise a suspect. The reasons are by no means always included in the official recognition report.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Unfortunately, 'recognisations' are not always assessed and tested critically during a criminal trial. As long as the judge sees no reason to doubt the reliability of the recognition, it is used for evidence. Even if no further investigation is conducted into the factors that are not included in the official report but are decisive for the reliability of the recognition. For example, while an official may say he recognised someone, when did he last see the person? And how long did that contact last? This information is essential and can shed a very different light on the case. Consciously or unconsciously, investigating officers often also want to recognise a person. After all, a case needs to be solved.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
According to Supreme Court case law, the question of whether a recognition by an investigating officer may or may not be used in evidence should be answered by the court or the trial court. In other words, the factual judges. They are in charge of selecting and valuing the evidence. Not the Supreme Court. When the file contains recognisations by investigating officers, the defence should consider calling the relevant investigating officers as witnesses. During a witness examination, further questions can then be asked about the circumstances on which the recognition is allegedly based. In this way, the defence can test the reliability of the recognition and, if possible, eventually ask the court to exclude the alleged recognition from evidence.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
The foregoing may seem logical. Yet courts and tribunals still often appear to adopt too easily an alleged recognition of an investigating officer. Indeed, the Amsterdam Court of Appeal managed to reject a request to hear an investigating officer's report because \"the Court has no reason to doubt the accuracy of the official reports of recognition of the suspect\". This ruling was overturned by the Supreme Court this summer because the defence should indeed be given the opportunity to test the reliability of the recognition when the accuracy of the recognition is disputed. The defence interest may be presumed in that case. Thus, a recognition may no longer be assumed blindly, but the defence will have to request the hearing of the verbaliser in a timely manner. This will at least ensure that the recognition is critically assessed. Then it is the defence's turn to convince the judge that the recognisations are unreliable and exclusion of evidence should follow.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Met grote regelmaat worden herkenningen door een opsporingsambtenaar als bewijsmiddel ingebracht in een strafzaak. In een ambtsedig proces-verbaal staat dan opgenomen dat de opsporingsambtenaar de verdachte voor 100% herkend op bijvoorbeeld de camerabeelden. De herkenning wordt vervolgens vaak weinig specifiek onderbouwd. Vaak is de herkenning gebaseerd op algemeenheden, zoals herkend aan postuur, uiterlijk of haardracht. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-strafrecht"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/penn.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/penn.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/penn.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penn.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penn.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5887"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/penn.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5887\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7181,"href":"https:\/\/penn.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5887\/revisions\/7181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/penn.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penn.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penn.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}