Taking the Witness Statement

The written, audio, or video statement of a witness taken by a police investigator will become
the permanent record of events as seen by that witness. The police investigator will use the
content of that statement as a reference document in the construction of search warrants and in
support of reasonable grounds for belief to lay an arrest. The crown prosecutor will use the
statement to construct their case for presentation to the court and for pre-trial disclosure of the
evidence to the defence counsel. The statement will serve as a document from which the witness
may refresh their memory of events to provide accurate testimony to the court.

Considering the foregoing list of uses, the witness statement needs to be as accurate and
complete as possible. The standard format used to begin a witness statement is as follows:

This is the statement of witness’s full name taken on date and time atlocation where taken
by name of person taking or recording the statement.

At the conclusion of the statement, it must be signed by the witness. If the statement is audio
and or video recorded, the foregoing preamble needs to be used to start the statement, and once
the statement is transcribed, the witness should sign the hard copy transcription.

Witness Identification of a Suspect – Photo Lineups and Live Lineups

Beyond taking a statement, one of the most common forms of obtaining information from a
witness is the practice of having witnesses identify a suspect through the viewing of photographs
or photo lineups. This kind of after the fact identification of a suspect will be subjected to
scrutiny when it is presented in court. Strict protocols must be followed to demonstrate that the
process was conducted in a fair and unbiased fashion. Under no circumstances would an
investigator ever present the witness with only a single photograph or a single lineup suspect and
ask if this is the suspect. Additionally, under no circumstances should an investigator ever state
that the suspect is one of the persons in the lineup.

In the practice of presenting photo lineups, the photos are arranged in a series of eight pictures
or more that are permanently mounted into a series of numbered windows of a special photo
lineup file folder.
 The suspect’s photograph is one of the eight pictures and the remaining seven photos are
called “distractor photos”. To be fair, these distractor photos need to be reasonably similar to the
suspect photo in terms of gender, age, race, head hair, facial hair, and glasses. When the photo
lineup is presented to the witness, there should be instruction by the investigator that the suspect
of the investigation may or may not be in this photo lineup (i.e. “please look at all the photos
carefully and only select the number of a photo if you are certain it is the suspect you saw at the
time of the event”).

Like photo lineups, live persons may be used to conduct a suspect identification or a suspect
in custody. These live lineups are more difficult to create because they require the cooperation of
the suspect and if the suspect does something during the viewing that could draw attention to
him; it could prejudice the lineup process. As with the photo lineup, the distractor subjects need
to be selected to be fairly similar to the suspect; however, unlike photo lineups, the live lineup
requires the additional elements of ensuring that everyone is of similar height, weight, body
shape, and dress. You cannot put the suspect dressed in a shirt and tie into a lineup with
distractors wearing blue jeans and tee shirts.
Another means of suspect identification is permitting the witness to page through volumes of
criminal file photos that are part of the local police photo collection. This technique is sometimes
used when there are no identifiable suspects and the witness is reasonably certain that they will
recognize the face of the suspect if they see it again. The negative aspects of this strategy are that
it can take a great deal of time, and a witness can sometimes become confused by the process
and overloaded with the viewing of too many faces, causing an eventual loss of confidence in
making a proper identification