“We can answer that question with perfect confidence: no reason at all. And in fact Renna did not lie. Between lying – that is, knowingly uttering falsehoods – and telling the truth – which is giving an account of the facts as they really and truly happened – there exists a third possibility. A possibility which the public prosecutor did not take into consideration, but which you must take into very close consideration. That of a witness who gives a certain version of the facts in the erroneous conviction that it is true.
“We are here concerned with what might be defined as involuntary false witness.”
They seemed interested. Even the judge and the military-looking juryman. The pair who – I was convinced of it – had already decided to find Abdou guilty.
“There are many ways of building up involuntary false witness. Some are deliberate, as in the case of the experiment with children that I told you about. Others are themselves involuntary and often prompted by the best intentions. As in this case.
“Let us together try to reconstruct what happened in the inquiry which led to the indictment of Abdou Thiam, and therefore to this trial. A little boy disappears and two days later his dead body is found. It is a deeply disturbing event, and those whose task it is to put the investigations in hand – the carabinieri, the public prosecutor – feel it is their urgent, their pressing duty to discover the culprits. There is justifiable eagerness to satisfy to the demand for justice provoked by such a horrible crime. By questioning the child’s relatives, and other persons who knew him well, the carabinieri discover this apparent friendship existing between the boy and this African pedlar. It is something strange, unusual, that arouses suspicions. And also the feeling that perhaps they are on the right track. Perhaps it is possible to satisfy that demand for justice and to placate that anguish. The investigation is no longer groping in the dark; it now has a possible suspect and a theoretical solution. This redoubles the efforts made to find confirmation for this theoretical solution. This is how things stand when the witness Renna is heard for the first time, by the carabinieri. The investigators are understandably excited by the possibility of solving the case, and they realize that the statements of this witness could well constitute a decisive step. It is at this stage that we see the construction of the involuntary false witness.
“Attention please, I beg of you. I am very far from saying that there was any deliberate manipulation of the inquiries. And even less am I speaking of the grotesque hypothesis of plots on the part of the investigators to the detriment of the defendant. The question is, at one and the same time, both simpler and more complex, and to explain what I wish to say I will borrow a famous phrase of Albert Einstein’s. The phrase, if I remember rightly, goes more or less like this: ‘It is the theory that determines what we observe.’
“What does this mean? It means that if we have a theory – a theory we like, that we are satisfied with, that seems to us good – we tend to examine the facts in the light of that theory. Rather than objectively observing all the available data, we look only for confirmations of that theory. Our very perception is strongly influenced, is indeed determined, by the theory we have settled on. As Einstein said in speaking of science, it is indeed the theory that determines what we succeed in observing. In other words, we see, we hear, we perceive what conforms to our theory and simply pass over all the rest. There is a Chinese saying that expresses the same concept in a different way. The Chinese say: ‘Two-thirds of what we see is behind our eyes.’
“We have all had experience of how our very perceptions are determined by what, for the most varied reasons, is in our heads or, as the Chinese would put it, behind our eyes.
“Have you never bought a new car and suddenly, driving along, you notice dozens of the same model on the roads? Where were they before?
“Perception filters, the psychologists call them.
“Paraphrasing Einstein, who, I imagine, must be turning in his grave at my intrusion, we can state that it is the investigatory hypothesis that determines what the investigators see. But not only that. It determines what they look for. It determines the questions they ask. It determines the manner in which they draw up their reports. And all this does not in the least imply bad faith.
“Allow me to repeat: all these things I have mentioned can produce errors in the investigations – and it is the business of the trial to correct such errors – but they do not in the least imply bad faith.
“If anything, in a case such as this, we are faced with an excess of
“Let us therefore return to what we were saying a few minutes ago. The investigators want to solve this dreadful crime. They want to do it for the best reasons and with the best intentions. They want to do it for the love of justice. They want to do it quickly, so that the perpetrator of such a horrible deed remains at liberty – and in a position to strike again – for as short a time as possible. In this state of mind they find a track to follow and single out a possible suspect. Not fantasies, mind you, or hypotheses used as pretexts. The track was a good one and the suspicions with regard to Abdou Thiam were plausible. On the basis of this good track, the investigators set off in pursuit of the man they considered to be the probable culprit.
“From that moment on the carabinieri and the public prosecutor have a theory which – as we learn from Einstein – will determine what they see, how they will act with witnesses, what they will ask them, how they will draw up the records and even
“You will now understand the reason for those questions put by the defence to the carabinieri sergeant-major regarding the manner in which the report was drawn up. Because if I make a complete record – complete, that is, with tape recording, stenotyping and so on – there is no difficulty in understanding what happened during that examination. Everything is on record – questions, answers, pauses, the lot – and we have only to read the transcription or listen to the tape recording. If the examiner has involuntarily influenced the witness, we can verify the fact simply by reading. Then each of us can come to his own conclusions.
“If the report is a mere summary, such a verification is impossible. And if the summarized report is that of the very first contact between the investigators and the witness, the risk of involuntary manipulation of the witness’s statements and memories is very high indeed.
“Would you like a little example of how this can happen?
“I am the investigator and I have before me someone who might be an important witness, perhaps a decisive one. I have strong suspicions of a certain subject, Abdou Thiam.
“I ask the witness: Do you know Abdou Thiam? The name means nothing to me, perhaps you could show me a photo. Here’s a photo, do you know him? Yes, yes. He’s one of those niggers who often hang about outside my bar. They’re such a nuisance. Did you see him pass your bar on the day the little boy disappeared?
“The witness pauses, thinking back. The investigators feel they are nearing a solution.
“Think hard. The afternoon of the child’s disappearance. It’s a week ago.
“It seems to me I did. Yes, he must have passed by. Seems to me it was certainly him.
“At this point the sergeant-major dictates this for the records, because he wants to get it down in black and white before the witness changes his mind. Which happens all too often, alas. He dictates it to the lance-corporal at the computer. He dictates it in his bureaucratic jargon, not in the language used by the witness.”
From my documents I selected the copy of Renna’s first statement and read from it.
“In the report concerned we find expressions such as ‘in the management of the aforesaid commercial premises I am assisted by…’ and so on. Obviously these are not the words of the witness Renna. Obviously we do not know what questions were addressed to Renna. We do not know because we are given only the answers. What were the questions put to the witness? Were they questions which influenced him? Were they leading questions, that is, questions so put as to suggest or prompt the expected answer? Were they questions which, quite involuntarily, created a memory?
“There is no need for bad faith. It is enough to have a theory to confirm and our brain does the rest on its own, perceiving, working out, setting down in the records in such a way as to adapt the facts to fit the theory. Creating, or shall I say assembling, a false memory.
“I say ‘false’ not because Renna invented anything or the carabinieri with criminal intent suggested a false story for him to tell. It is simply that in the course of the first interrogation Renna’s memories were reprogrammed in the light of the investigatory theory adopted, for which no objective verification was sought, but only confirmation. Those memories were reprogrammed, and how this happened in concrete fact we shall never know. Because the interrogation of this witness was not taped, only summarized in writing. In the manner which we have seen.
“Would you like to know how far it is possible to influence the reply of a witness, or even modify his memory, simply by putting the question in a different way? Let me tell you of another experiment, this time carried out in Italy. Three groups of psychology students – not children, not uninformed persons, but students of psychology who
