“[Detective] MacGillivary interviewed [Jay] a second time on March 15, 1999, with [Adnan’s] cell phone records, and noticed that [Jay] statement did not match up to the records. Once confronted with the cell phone records, [Jay] ‘remembered things a lot better.” (Brief of Appellant at 11.) In order for evidence to corroborate a witness’s story — that is, to demonstrate that a witness was telling the truth — the corroborating evidence has to come from an independent source. But when a witness’s story is created by using the “corroborating” evidence as a reference, then that evidence doesn’t prove anything about the veracity of the witness’s account. Because, as should be self-evident, if you tell a witness, “I know your story is a lie if you tell me you did something other than ‘XYX,” and the witness then tells you, “I did ‘XYZ,” that’s not evidence that the witness is telling the truth. It’s just evidence that the witness is not a complete idiot.
Posted on: Thu, 27 Nov 2014 05:35:08 +0000
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