Sorry I've been away. I try to post once a week, but last week that didn't happen. Now it's not that I don't have things to write about with regard to being a criminal defense investigator. The trickiest part of this blog is sorting through all the posts I'd LIKE to make, until finally thinking of a post that I CAN make. I would never want any of my cases, clients or attorneys to be compromised (or have their privacy violated) because of anything I blabbed about on here. So I guess that means that I can only post about the less juicy aspects of the job.......like report writing lingo.
I have always struggled with how to identify the witness in a written report. Say that I initially refer to him as Johnny Johnson. After that do I call him Mr. Johnson, or just Johnson? I kind of like just calling him Johnny, as it is most conversational and easy to read. Or is it too familiar, too cozy if he is a defense witness? Obviously, whatever terms I use, I need to use it in the same way for every witness. I've seen some investigators write "Witness Johnson" every time they refer to the interviewee, but that's a mouthful. Some investigators just write "the witness" and some wittle it down to "wit." This seems so anonymous. Plus, what if the reader forgets who the heck the witness is as they are halfway into your six page report. Some attorneys do have a short attention span.
Then there's the other players that appear in a written report. When Johnny Johnson refers to April Showers, do I simply write April after that? Or does she become Showers or Miss Showers, but what if she's more of a I-am-woman-hear-me-roar-MS. Showers. And what if I can't rule out that she's a Mrs. Showers? If her name is April Johnson, well then it's easy. Since I don't want to confuse her with Johnny Johnson, I'll certainly refer to her as just April after her initial introduction.
If this sounds nit pickingly boring to you, welcome to the detail oriented world of your average criminal defense investigator. This job is often obsessed with the details. That, and learning to work in the field with a full bladder. But that's another post.
Then there's the question of how I refer to myself, as the invesigator, in a written report. Am I "this investigator" the whole, awkward report. I surely can not repeat "Investigator Smith" every paragraph either. Or am I the "u/s?" I think that's the abbreviation some folks use. Most of the ex-cops in the public defender's office used this term in their reports. I think it means the undersigned. That's how lots of cops refer to themselves in police reports. Frankly, I've never been too sure what it means, but ugly sinner is always the first thing that comes to my mind for some unknown reason. To me, this kind of self-reference confuses the reader, who is already trying to figure out exactly WHO said WHAT to WHOM......and WHEN. It seems equivalent to writing in the report 1300 hours instead of 1:00 p.m. Why make the reader of the report work harder than they need to?
When I was in the public defender's office, I was instructed to always put in titles like Mr. and Mrs. every time I referred to the witness. I was told to refer to myself as "this investigator." The beauty of being private is that I can do what feels most natural: refer to the witness by their first name and refer to myself as me, myself and I. Life is so much more simple that way. Okay, I'll stop procrastinating now and go back to my report writing...
3 comments:
I also think it makes a difference if you have an idea in advance whether what you're writing is discoverable (maybe even indended to be discoverable by the attorney). In extreme cases (and only when so instructed) i've used a formula i finally nicknamed ABSOLUTE REPETITION. Every sentence uses subject-verb-object, and every sentence contains all proper nouns. "Mr. Johnny Johnson told investigator Starry Decisive that Mr. Johnny Johnson saw April Showers outside The Stop-N-Rob on Saturday, November 4, 2006, at about 11 p.m. Mr. Johnny Johnson told investigator Starry Decisive...." This is in case you end up reading part of it alound on the stand, which fortunately never happened to me.
Otherwise, i took perverse joy in making my memos as bland as possible.
Dear Investigator Starry Decisive of Absolute Repetition fame:
If you ever had to read an Absolutely Repetitive report in open court, I'm not sure if the jury would hate you, or be appreciative that you made it crystal clear who you were talking about in any given sentence. That technique must knock on about an additional page to each report, as well.
I once had to read to a jury from a report that contained detailed descriptions of 4 different people. The judge actually got mad at me for reading the descriptions from my report. She expected me to have memorized the four relevent paragraphs,which I swear contained details down to the color of the underwear sticking out of each man's jeans. That's another eg. of why you're right that reports should be fashioned with respect to who will be reading them.
Kudos to you for actually coming up with a nickname for your technique. You must have the investigative bug pretty bad!
I keep my reports simple. I use the last name of the witness and refer to myself as 'I'. Such as 'I asked Johnson if he told the police...' I hate police reports with CHP being the worst. They use letters to identify witnesses and vehicles. By the third page you forget who P-1 or W-3 refers to.
By the way, I am a devoted reader of your blog but not big on comments. I like your moniker, its cool. Is it the Marvin Gaye or Stones version?
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