Recognizing Deception Without Guessing

Who Should Read This Publication?

This publication is particularly valuable for:

• Military defense counsel — Assessing credibility is often central to evaluating an allegation. This publication explains why nervousness, hesitation, eye contact, emotional reactions, or other behaviors should not be treated as proof of deception and why credibility should instead be tested against the available evidence.
• Civilian attorneys representing service members — Attorneys confronting conflicting accounts can benefit from understanding how investigators distinguish between behavior that merely deserves additional inquiry and evidence that actually challenges the reliability of a statement.
• Defense investigators — Investigators must recognize potentially significant reactions without allowing personal impressions to become conclusions. This publication provides a framework for testing statements through consistency, opportunity, timelines, documents, digital evidence, physical evidence, and independent corroboration.
• Attorneys and investigators evaluating witness credibility — A witness may be nervous, hesitant, emotional, unusually calm, or inconsistent for reasons having nothing to do with deception. This publication explains why credibility determinations should focus on whether important assertions withstand factual examination.
• Legal teams handling cases involving inconsistent or changing statements — Not every inconsistency is a lie. Memory errors, estimates, misunderstanding, and additional context can produce legitimate differences between statements. The important question is whether the discrepancy affects a material fact and whether it can be reasonably explained.
• Investigators conducting interviews and re-interviews — Behavioral changes may identify subjects that deserve additional questioning, but they should guide inquiry rather than determine the investigator’s conclusion. This publication explains how to recognize those moments and then look for evidence capable of explaining them.
• Service members and families seeking to understand credibility assessments — This publication provides insight into why a professional defense investigation should not determine truthfulness based upon how someone appears or behaves. The objective is to test what the person says against independently established facts.