Meaningfulness

With statement to drive the capability is called, realistically reproduce experiences, particularly in the form of a witness statement in court.

There are five individual steps involved in assessing the reliability of the information, all of which must be answered in the affirmative in order for it to be reliable. The witness must be able to:

to perceive the facts at all,
to keep him in mind until the testimony,
reproduce the facts essentially completely without outside influence,
To distinguish what you have experienced from your own imagination,
and finally to have the linguistic and communication skills to be able to describe what has been experienced in court.

The reliability of the statement does not yet answer the question of whether the statement is credible in terms of content or whether it is factually complete and correct. It is all about the basic cognitive ability to be able to make a statement at all.

In criminal law, the assessment of the testimony of a witness is of central importance in certain cases. Classic examples of this are, for example, the sexual abuse of children and adolescents, where as a rule there are no other witnesses besides the victim and the judge must therefore ask himself the question of whether the victim is able to make a realistic statement when assessing evidence To submit the course of the offense. In today's jurisprudence, the age limit from which it can be assumed that information is reliable is drawn from around the age of 4. Nevertheless, even in adults, certain mental illnesses can lead to the fact that the ability to provide information is reduced or completely eliminated.

Individual evidence

↑ Helmut Kury, Joachim Obergfell-Fuchs: Legal Psychology: Forensic Basics and Assessment. A textbook for study and practice . Kohlhammer Verlag, Stuttgart 2012, ISBN 317023563X , p. 156ff
↑ Luise Greuel et al .: credibility of the testimony: theory and practice of forensic-psychological assessment . Beltz publishing group, Weinheim 1998, ISBN 3-621-27398-0
↑ S. Lau, C. Böhm, R. Volbert: Mental disorder and expressiveness . In: Der Nervenarzt , 79, No. 1, pp. 60-66, doi : 10.1007 / s00115-007-2357-2

[1] Helmut Kury, Joachim Obergfell-Fuchs: Legal Psychology: Forensic Basics and Assessment. A textbook for study and practice . Kohlhammer Verlag, Stuttgart 2012, ISBN 317023563X , p. 156ff

[2] Luise Greuel et al .: credibility of the testimony: theory and practice of forensic-psychological assessment . Beltz publishing group, Weinheim 1998, ISBN 3-621-27398-0

[3] S. Lau, C. Böhm, R. Volbert: Mental disorder and expressiveness . In: Der Nervenarzt , 79, No. 1, pp. 60-66, doi : 10.1007 / s00115-007-2357-2