32.767, Review: Anthropological Linguistics; Sociolinguistics: Komter (2019)

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Subject: 32.767, Review: Anthropological Linguistics; Sociolinguistics: Komter (2019)

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Date: Tue, 02 Mar 2021 14:11:06
From: Dakota Wing [wingdakota at gmail.com]
Subject: The Suspect's Statement

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/31/31-1791.html

AUTHOR: Martha  Komter
TITLE: The Suspect's Statement
SUBTITLE: Talk and Text in the Criminal Process
SERIES TITLE: Studies in Interactional Sociolinguistics
PUBLISHER: Cambridge University Press
YEAR: 2019

REVIEWER: Dakota Wing, York University

SUMMARY

‘The Suspects’ Statement: Talk and Text in the Criminal Process’ by Martha
Komter is the 33rd addition to Cambridge University Press’ Studies in
Interactional Sociolinguistic series. Komter’s 207-page book provides an
insightful analysis and discussion of the career of the suspect’s statement as
it travels through the Dutch legal process, contributing important insights to
textual travels in institutional settings, especially within the growing field
of language and the law. Drawing on her previous studies and two decades of
data, Komter provides a “complete story” (p.1) of the career of the suspect’s
statement by articulately “investigating its construction in the police
interrogating room, its written character as part of the police report, and
its uses in court by the professionals who deal with the case” (p. 1-2). 

‘The Suspect’s Statement’ is organized into six chapters. Chapter 1, the
Introduction, is followed Chapter 2 ‘The Police Interrogation: The Talk, the
Typing and the Text’, Chapter 3 ‘The Police Report: The Document, the Text and
the Talk’, and Chapter 4 ‘The Trial: Documents in Action’) which methodically
walk through the various stages of the criminal law process that the statement
travels though. In Chapter 5, ‘The Career of a Suspect’s Statement’, concepts
from the previous chapters converge as Komter analyzes the progression of a
specific suspect’s statement from its construction in a police interrogation
to its actions in the criminal trial. This is followed by a ‘Conclusion and
Discussion’ in Chapter 6. Appendix A appears on p.189 and Appendix B is
available online at www.cambridge.org. Transcription conventions are provided
on p. x-xi.

Chapter 1 introduces readers to the “mainly inquisitorial” (p.3) Dutch
criminal law process, the materials and speech events considered for analysis
(the statement as part of the police report, the police report as part of the
case file, the police interrogation, and the trial), the ethnomethodological
and Conversation Analysis (CA) approaches to the data, and the main concept of
entextualization (the process of decontextualizing and recontextualizing a
text (p. 11-12)) of the suspect’s statement as it travels through and creates
different contexts. Komter also describes the two-decade-long data collection
process and her innovative method of transcription simultaneously representing
talk, typing, and other visible actions. 

The analysis begins in Chapter 2, ‘The Police Interrogation: The Talk, the
Typing and the Text’ with Komter highlighting the contemporaneous
interrogating and typing of the statement and the effects this has on the
questioning of the suspect and the typing of the statement. Komter
distinguishes “solo” interrogations with one questioning officer from ‘duo’
interrogations with two officers, allowing for the identification of different
interactional organizations (p.26). In solo interrogations, the questioning
officer is also the transcriber, resulting in a recurring
Question-Answer-Typing sequence in which, after a suspect provides an answer
to an officer’s question, there is a period of non-talk during which the
officer is typing. This uninterrupted turn of typing is viewed as a third turn
receipt object, the onset of which also signals the suspect’s response as
acceptable and recordable. Similarly, dissatisfaction with a response can be
signaled by not initiating the typing. 

The resulting text of the statement is the product of the officer “collapsing
the words of the interrogator’s questions with those of the suspect’s answers,
and by reformulating these as the suspect’s first-person narrative” (p.28).
This renders the questioning officer invisible and results in the blurring of
source distinctions. Komter’s transcription style also allows for the
observation that officers often begin typing their questions (recontextualized
as monologic responses) before the suspect begins their response, thus
creating performance problems as the officers are required to type and listen
at the same time. Komter demonstrates how the text that the officers write
provides context for the talk, the text that is produced, and the way that
officers orient to future audiences (readers), noting that it “looks backward,
as a representation of what was said in the interrogation, and it looks
forward in anticipation of the scrutiny of the legal professionals in the
criminal law process” (p. 25). In duo interrogations, on the other hand, one
officer is tasked with typing and the other with interrogating. This division
of labor allows for continuous typing, and the act of typing along with what
is said plays less of a role in the interactional organization than in solo
interrogations. 

 In Chapter 3, ‘The Police Report: The Document, the Text and the Talk’,
Komter explores the recontextualized police statement as a written text and
material piece of evidence. The statement appears embedded within other texts
representing anonymous bureaucratic perspectives and the reporting officer’s
perspective, framing the statement’s origin and intended use, as well as
framing it as an official, truthful, voluntary, and legally obtained statement
authored by the suspect. Komter identifies various transformations that the
statement undergoes from its original talk in the interrogation to the written
report. These include the omission of information deemed not relevant (and
thus the selective inclusion of ‘relevant’ information), reorganizing of the
interaction, and adding information to contribute to the coherence and
perceived procedural correctness of creating the statement. Different
reporting styles are found to result in different transformations that can
lead to varying degrees of transparency with regard to interrogator actions as
well as misconstrued perceptions of adversarial interactions. These analyses
demonstrate an orientation to future readers and users (e.g., lawyers and
judges) of the statement. 

Chapter 4, ‘The Trial: Documents in Action’, discusses the suspect’s statement
as part of a larger case file and the actions achieved by institutional actors
in the courtroom by reading or referring to it. The “professional reading” of
the statement provides each legal actor (judges, prosecutors, and defense
lawyers) with varying resources for performing respective institutional tasks.
Focusing mainly on judges’ references to the statement, Komter demonstrates
their reliance on the statement when questioning suspects. This involves
offering information to be verified, clarified, or elaborated in a first
position action and then assessing the suspect’s response in a third position
action. Thus, the statement, previously shown to be co-constructed in the
interrogation, is taken as solely produced by the suspect. The suspect is
therefore responsible for everything reported in it. In Goffman’s (1981)
terms, when a judge quotes the statement, the suspect is the assumed sole
author and principal. This allows the suspect’s version of events testified to
in court to be compared against the version in the statement. Despite the
suspects’ first-hand knowledge of the past events, when discrepancies occur at
trial the statement is viewed and used as an authoritative version of the
events (emphasized by the authenticity acquired by the surrounding texts as
discussed in Chapter 3). Judges’ references to the statement to confront
suspects with inconsistencies allow them to remain seemingly neutral and
objective by relying on their second-hand knowledge of the events. Komter also
notes that there may be interactional ambiguities at trial as judges not only
use the statement by referring to it for questioning, but also by reading from
it to ratify their verdicts. The former invites a response from the suspect,
but the latter does not. 

In Chapter 5, ‘The Career of a Suspect’s Statement’, Komter focuses on one
suspect’s statement from its production in the interrogation through to its
actions in court. This follows the sequence of interactions in the career of
the statement as demonstrated in the previous chapters, allowing generalized
concepts from Chapters 2, 3, and 4 to be illuminated as they are applied to a
single case. Komter shows, among other things, how the suspect’s version of
events undergoes a discursive negotiation in the interrogation, which is first
recorded in the statement using the officer’s words, and then used by the
judge to challenge the suspect during the trial. 

Lastly, the ‘Conclusion and Discussion’ in Chapter 6 summarizes the findings
in the previous chapters and the entextualization process that the suspect’s
statement undergoes during its journey through the legal system. Komter
discusses the various contexts that the statement travels through and creates,
including the discursive context, the institutional context, the textual
contexts, the interactional and sequential contexts, the documentary contexts,
and the professional contexts, noting that “‘the suspect’s statement’ changes
its meaning at every step in the entextualization process as different kinds
of context are produced, emerge or fade away” (p. 181). Komter reflects on the
analytic choices that inherently serve as a recontextualization of the data
themselves and discusses implications of her work, noting that the
unintentional and unacknowledged consequences of the entextualizations of the
suspect’s statement may result in miscarriages of justice. She also suggests
that her findings are likely applicable to other judicial and institutional
settings as the “practices [are] inherent to entextualization processes,
whatever their setting” (p.188). 

EVALUATION

‘The Suspect’s Statement’ is an exciting contribution to the field of language
in the legal process, providing important insights into the
recontextualizations of the suspect’s statement and, more generally, the
entextualization process as a text travels through different institutional
contexts. As such, Komter achieves the aims of the book, to “acquire insight
into the interactional and documentary foundations of the Dutch criminal law
process and, more generally, to understand the effects of the construction,
character and use of documents in institutional settings” (p. 2). These aims
are a reminder that such linguistic analyses can reach beyond the academic
community and have important implications for practitioners such as the
institutional actors who create, refer to, and rely on the suspect’s statement
or other texts that travel through any institutional process.

One of the book’s strong points is the progression of the chapters following
the sequential career of the suspect’s statement from the police interrogation
to the trial and culminating in a case study-type analysis in Chapter 5 that
incorporates and applies findings from previous chapters. Although Chapter 5
repeats analytic points and concepts from previous chapters, it allows readers
to view the statement as embedded within a larger system and to follow one
statement as it undergoes the entextualization process. Readers interested in
specific stages of the criminal justice system (i.e., the police interrogation
or the trial) will find the segregation of these stages in Chapters 2-4
especially beneficial. Despite the organization of the book possibly
suggesting that each phase of the criminal justice system discussed in
Chapters 2-4 is independent of other stages, Komter’s analysis carefully
builds on and refers to prior and later chapters, ensuring that it  represents
the legal process as an actual process, with the suspect’s statement
demonstrating its interconnectedness. This is exemplified in Chapter 5. 

Readers familiar with Komter’s work will recognize some data and analyses from
her previous studies. Therefore some concepts might seem recycled, but as
Komter aptly states, “although this book draws on my earlier research on
trials and police interrogations, the combination and the interplay of the
materials result in a synergy that affords the telling of a different, and in
a sense more complete story” (p.1). Indeed, the sequential analyses in
Chapters 2-4 accompanied by the case-study in Chapter 5 provide readers with a
thorough overview and in-depth analysis of the suspect’s statement’s career in
the Dutch criminal justice system.

Another strength of “The Suspect’s Statement” is that it is rich with data and
clearly data-driven with over 100 excerpts discussed throughout Chapters 2-5.
Komter notes that the data come from three periods of time, the early 1990s,
the late 1990s, and 2007-2009. Excerpts are labelled ‘O’ and ‘N’, presumably
for ‘old’ (data from the 90s) and ‘new’ data (data from the 2000s), although
this is never made clear. Explaining the excerpt identifications would allow
readers to easily identify excerpts that come from the same case or time
period, especially when excerpts jump from ‘old’ to ‘new’ data. It is also
notable that only three of the statements are traced from interrogation to
trial, but readers are encouraged to recognize the patterns that Komter
identifies across the data at each stage.

Komter addresses the timespan of the data, noting that there are differences
between ‘old’ and ‘new’ data, likely influenced by procedural changes, but
that despite these, “the professionals’ concern with finding out ‘what
happened’ has not changed, nor has the nature of their truth-finding efforts”
(p. 16). However, the analysis is not restricted to just ‘what happened’ and
the officers’ efforts. Although these institutional goals can be oriented to
(in CA terms), the analysis also focuses on the discursive and documentary
features that Komter acknowledges have changed over time, including the report
writing styles and the number of officers in interrogations. 

The method of collecting the timing of the typed data during the interrogation
is a limitation that Komter addresses but should be mentioned. Interrogations
were only audio recorded, so the representations of what is typed during the
interrogation is approximated, guided by “typing sounds” and “informed
choice[s]” made after collecting and studying the data. Komter recognizes that
this was most difficult when talk and typing overlapped and when statements
were edited by officers post interrogation. Although she notes that
retrospectively she would have installed a text-tracking device, the method of
reconstructing data used for these analyses raises some questions about the
reliability of the data. 

The transcription conventions developed by Komter are innovative and warrant
credit for simultaneously representing talk, typing, and other visible
actions. This demonstrates Komter’s awareness of the importance of accounting
for non-verbal features in transcriptions of interactional events. However, by
only audio recording interrogation data, the amount of information available
for analysis is limited in comparison to the trial data that was audio and
video recorded. The transcription conventions require some getting used to,
resulting in the key being frequently consulted. Readers unfamiliar with CA or
Jeffersonian notation (although there are significant deviations from such
standardized conventions) may struggle to follow the examples. Likewise, CA
terminology is often used to discuss excerpts, potentially restricting the
audience to those experienced with CA which would not include the proposed
audience of legal practitioners. Nevertheless, the main concepts are made
clear, and chapter summaries and the final discussion in Chapter 6 discuss the
findings in broader terms. 

Readers should also be cautioned that the data for this book has been
translated from Dutch into English. This translation is only briefly mentioned
in the book, limited to a couple of sentences in the transcription key and the
introduction, and in two footnotes noting that typing errors are maintained.
Komter does not reflect on her translation as an entextualization process. It
is concerning that an analysis that focuses on the transformations of the
statement does not address this recontextualization. The failure to discuss
this results in an erasure of Dutch from the data and analysis, which is
amplified by not including Appendix B, the Dutch transcriptions, in the print
version or the e-book – they are only available online. 

Komter’s contribution stands out among current literature as her data comes
from a (“mainly”) inquisitorial legal system (p.3). As such, it offers a
comparative perspective for studies in adversarial systems. For example,
Komter details the role of the judge as the institutional actor who mainly
refers to the suspect’s statement at trial, reinforced by a legal requirement
for the judge to read or summarize aspects that their verdict relies on. This
is not typical of adversarial systems in which prosecutors and defense lawyers
are more likely to refer to and recontextualize the statement in alignment
with the opposing goals that are inherent in the adversarial system. Thus,
although the findings in ‘The Suspect’s Statement’ may not be generalizable to
all legal systems, Komter provides a welcome analysis that can be compared and
contrasted to other systems.  

Readers should be aware that the types of cases the data comes from (i.e., a
five-euro theft in Chapter 5) may limit the ability to generalize the findings
to more serious offences. Additionally, some cases, such as the case detailed
in Chapter 5, involve a minor, and the trial takes place in juvenile court. It
is not clear if the interviewing practices or the trial procedures are similar
for adults in the Dutch legal system, but the analysis is presented as
representative of the legal process.
 
Furthermore, the practice of officers producing a typed statement is
increasingly obsolete in many jurisdictions. Technological advances and
procedural changes permit many legal systems to rely on audio/video recording
or a transcript produced from these recording. For example, Haworth (2018)
notes that in the adversarial system in the UK, official transcriptions of
police interviews “are generally the only source consulted by those involved
in the case, and are the version presented in court as evidence” (p.442).
Therefore, the findings in this book may be increasingly limited in
applicability as more jurisdictions require recordings and rely on these. In
this sense, Komter’s work may serve as support for jurisdictions to transition
to mandated audio and video recordings or other methods of statement-taking
that aim to rectify the various issues she illustrates. Conversely, studies of
statement-taking practices in countries that require and rely on recordings
are noticeably not applicable in Komter’s data. For example, in Heydon’s
(2013) analysis of Australian police interviews in a system with a reliance on
recordings, Heydon notes that interviewing officers orient to future audiences
in subsequent legal proceedings as hearers of a recording or readers of a
transcript by using discursive techniques to elicit information from suspects
in a specific ‘target’ production format in which the suspect is the author,
animator, and the principal. In Komter’s study, this is not observed, likely
because the officers type the statement in recontextualized styles that blur
the source distinctions, and the suspect is presented as holding all
production roles.  

‘The Suspect’s Statement’ provides a strong foundation for future studies that
can examine the suspect’s statement in other contexts, such as judicial
opinions and media reports. Additionally, the same data may be explored with
alternative approaches, such as investigating ideologies held in the Dutch
legal system. Komter touches on this in discussing the referentialist
ideology, noting that legal actors, especially at trial, “disregard the
origins of police reports” (p. 185) and that this ideology is a “fundamental
feature of the entextualization process” (p. 186). Further studies could also
explore the power relations involved in creating, documenting, and using the
suspect’s statement.

REFERENCES

Goffman, E. (1981). Footing. In Forms of Talk. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
124-150

Haworth, K. (2018). Tapes, transcripts and trials: The routine contamination
of police interview evidence. The International Journal of Evidence & Proof,
22(4), 428-450.

Heydon, G. (2005). The language of police interviewing. Hampshire: Palgrave
Macmillan. 

Komter, M. (2019). The suspect's statement: Talk and text in the criminal
process. Cambridge University Press.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Dakota Wing is a Ph.D. Candidate in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics at
York University in Toronto, Canada, and holds an MA in Forensic Linguistics
from Hofstra University. His current research focuses on police discourse and
he regularly consults privately on criminal, civil, and investigative cases
involving language evidence. Dakota has worked with the Forensic Linguistics
Capital Case Innocence Project and with the Institute for Forensic
Linguistics, Threat Assessment, and Strategic Analysis at Hofstra University





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