Informational survey
An informational interview (more rarely informational interview or informational interview is) one usually at the beginning of a police operation or other civil conversation in connection with a criminal offense or misdemeanor taking place forming conversation between law enforcement officials and persons at the crime scene are to get an overall picture of the sequence of events and to make the offenders in question .
General
The informational interrogation does not serve to distinguish witnesses and accused / affected persons from one another, as it is not intended to constitute a procedural statute and the witnesses and accused’s rights to refuse to give evidence could thus be circumvented or inadmissibly delayed. The questioning is only for the purpose of researching the truth . As soon as an assignment is possible - in the case of the accused or the person concerned, if there is sufficient suspicion of a perpetrator - appropriate instruction and necessary measures are given ; The same applies to a person's testimony.
Examinations of the accused and those affected cannot be used as evidence in criminal proceedings if the necessary instructions have not been given, Section 252 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. If it was just an informational survey, there is no obligation to instruct and therefore the answer to an informational survey can also be used.
The legal basis in German criminal proceedings is the investigative competence based on the principle of legality in accordance with Section 163 StPO , and in administrative offense proceedings via the reference in Section 46 OWiG .
Legal issues
Statements by the interviewed persons on the matter can be used in court as long as they take place within the limits of a permissible informational questioning, but are covered by a prohibition of the use of evidence under Section 252 of the Code of Criminal Procedure for witnesses who were silent during the main hearing . Spontaneous statements are not interviews, but unsolicited statements made to officials of their own free will.
The basic decision of the BGH concerned that an intoxicated pedestrian had been apprehended near a damaged vehicle and that the police officers viewed him as a suspect of having committed the accident based on a driver's license in the passenger seat. As a result of the existing suspicion , the BGH could no longer accept an informational questioning of the pedestrian. The limit of the informational questioning is reached when the police suspect the respondent and the accused himself has the impression that he is being treated as a suspect (when the police behave that usually only applies to the accused). This was also answered in the affirmative because the accused, when asked about the vehicle, immediately denied having driven and defended himself by stating that he only drank 2 glasses of beer after the accident.
See also
- Prohibition of Evidence
- Police security attack
- Police tactics
- Interrogation
Web links
- Article “Duty of instruction before questioning about alcohol consumption?” , Contribution of the DPolG
Individual evidence
- ↑ IWW Institute for Knowledge in Business, Missing instruction leads to prohibition of the use of evidence , accessed on November 9, 2018
- ↑ BGHSt 38, 214
