S.V. Matveev. The Forming Process of Testimonies of Minors in Criminal Procedure

Abstract: Psychological mechanism of building a testimony is traditionally divided in three stages (phases): perception, memorizing and reproduction. The nature and results of perception are connected with the perception object and peculiarities of the perceiving individual. Minors’ perception of outer reality is conditioned by the age characteristics. During age development their perception changes, it improves. In any situation children distinguish things that attract their attention by unusual form, bright color, glitter etc. They separate reflected objects from all constant irritants not by objective significance in the situation (as adults do in most cases), but only by external characteristics. Obtaining full information about an investigated case from a minor suggests his orientation in space-temporal relation environment. However, minor’s evaluation of such relations is not always accurate. Thus, children cannot precisely identify the relative location of people y to each other and surrounding objects; time perception of minors of preschool and elementary school age is imperfect. Depending on psychological development and obtaining of knowledge during study process, accuracy of time differentiation is developed. In different stages of the processof building a testimony, the interrogatee has certain psychological conditions that should be considered by the interrogator in order to discover related distortions and select the proper interrogation technique. Emotions effect perception process differently. Some of them (curiosity, doubts, feeling of new) may improve the quality, the other, especially in ultramontane affect stage, may deform it. Such negative emotions as fear, fright or agitation bring in mistakes. Perception of an observed event does not provide its correct reproduction. As a result of feelings and perceptions, brain cortex forms temporary nervous connections (associations). Memorizing process starts from here, and memory activity starts from here as well. Memorizing of the perceived material by an interrogatee depends on time factor. With time, there is increasing danger to lose or distort information. A person in ordinary and quiet circumstances has a tendency to memorize clearly lastingly when power and brightness of an event goes up, then in extreme situations a witness, or victim, or guilty party, especially a minor, is weakened by the strong shock which may even wipe out all remembered things from memory. In procedural sense, the main and final stage of building a testimony is reproduction stage. During this stage the interrogation goal is to receive from an interrogatee meaningful for the case, maximum full information, according to the way the interrogatee perceived the information and kept it in memory. Reproduction process during interrogation shows itself in the form of word expression of thoughts made by the interrogatee. The ability to express one’s thoughts correctly depends on age of a young person and his intellectual development level. It is most difficult to interrogate minors belonging to youngest groups. In the process of reproduction of material, teenagers not always arrange and group it, nor they pay attention to most important things; sometimes secondary but bright parts of an event take first place in the story. However, in this case the interpretation of events can be too extended or extremely limited. In conclusion, it should be noticed that knowledge and skillful usage by investigator of all consistent patterns and peculiarities of the process of building a testimony involving minors, produces positive result upon the performed interrogation and fullness of obtained information by the interrogator dealing with the case; and finally, for the success of the crime investigation, in general.