As práticas judiciais de produção de provas testemunhais : o interrogatório como ritual de interação e as distorções da memória no processo penal

Abstract

The objective of this work is to present and discuss issues related to memory use in judicial testimonial situations, more specifically regarding the false memories, analyzing if and how they can modify the witness’ statement. In order to achieve this objective it was carried out a bibliographic research about “memory and false memories” and it was also done an experiment with volunteers, so as the results of both practical and theoretical studies could be jointly understood. In theory, it wasunderstood that many factors may alter the spoken content of a witnessed fact, such asspontaneous and suggested false memories, emotions, individual differences and the subjectivity of the interviewer – who is a protagonist in the ritualistic aspect of this process. All these factors mitigate the dogma of the real truth. An empiric test with experimental methodological and ethnographic criteria indicates that different ways of testimonial evidence collection may generate twisted reports, and it was evaluated that individual circumstances can influence when collecting testimonial evidences.