Temporal Integrity of Eyewitness Evidence: Memory Contamination, Investigative Sequencing, and the Preservation of Testimonial Information

It argues that the evidentiary value of a witness account depends not only upon what the witness ultimately reports, but also upon when particular information was first reported, what information was available to the witness at that moment, what investigative interventions subsequently occurred, and whether later statements can be distinguished from earlier uncontaminated recollection. Drawing upon cognitive psychology, investigative interviewing research, forensic evidence scholarship, and criminal-procedure principles, the article distinguishes four stages of testimonial information: initial recollection, investigative interaction, subsequent reconstruction, and formalized testimonial presentation.

It proposes that investigators and courts should treat the chronology of witness information as an evidentiary variable rather than merely as administrative history. The article does not propose that every later change in testimony demonstrates contamination or unreliability. Nor does it suggest that an initial account is invariably accurate.

Rather, it proposes a procedural principle of temporal preservation: the earliest reasonably obtainable account should be documented with sufficient detail to permit later reconstruction of what the witness knew before subsequent investigative influences occurred. This principle can complement established safeguards for investigative interviewing and eyewitness identification while providing a more precise framework for evaluating changing testimony.</p>