Eyewitness testimony has extensively been used by the criminal justice system as an unquestioned
form of evidence and law enforcement professionals have heavily relied on it. Research has
established that those testimonies can be undermined by both intrinsic factors – arising from the
individual, and extrinsic factors – arising from outside the individual, which could thus lead to
false convictions. The present study has attempted to understand one of the latter, which is the
procedure held by French law enforcement officers regarding memory enhancement in the context
of eyewitness testimony in France and the reliable factors that have an impact on the interviews
protocols.
Five participants have been involved in this study, in France. A qualitative interviewing protocol
consisting of open-ended questions has been used to gain knowledge about the current procedures
and the responses have been analysed using in one hand principles of grounded theory, which is
both an approach to generate theory from qualitative data and a method to analyse codes and
process such data, and in another hand, a Foucauldian approach to Discourse Analysis (FDA),
which focuses on the role of language in communication and in the construction of social life,
which is the relationship between the discourse and the subjectivity (Willig & Rogers, 2008).
9 main concepts have broadly been expressed within all the interviews, revealing the reliable
factors that might impact the interviews protocols: Interview structure; Interview setting;
Memory; Emotions; Mental & Physical health; Media; Socio-cultural factors; Political and
Religious factors; Lie drivers. The researcher suggested an increased cooperation and expertise
sharing between investigators and magistrates, police psychologists, police trainers, as well as
researchers being involved in the field of eyewitnesses testimonies, in order to to make eyewitness
evidence more accurate and reliable.

Abstract ........................................................ 2
Chapter I: Literature Review .................................... 5
1.1. Witnessing.................................................. 6
1.2. Witnessing in France ....................................... 7
1.3. The Development of Eyewitnessing in the Criminal System .... 8
1.3. Limitations to the Reliability of Eyewitness Testimony ..... 12
1.4. Legal and Law Enforcement Professionals Beliefs and Knowledge Regarding Eyewitness Testimony .... 22
1.5. The French legal system .......................................................... 24
1.6. Law enforcement officers’ interviews: current techniques and protocols .......... 27
1.7. Law enforcement officers interviews: recent volutions ...... 29
1.8. Purpose of the Current Study ............................... 30
Chapter II: Methodology ......................................... 31
2.1. Participants ............................................... 31
2.2. Data Resources Management and Procedure .................... 34
2.3. Data Management and Analysis ............................... 37
Chapter III: Results ............................................ 39
3.1. Eyewitness Interviews Protocols ............................ 39
3.2. Memory and emotions ........................................ 59
3.3. Investigations and media ................................... 61
3.4. Socio-cultural, politial and religious factors ............. 61
3.5. Eyewitness testimony’s weight: defence motivations. ........ 63
Chapter IV: Discussion and Limitations .......................... 69
5.1. Systematic factors ......................................... 69
5.2. Environmental factors ...................................... 77
5.3. External factors ........................................... 79
5.4. Psychological factors ...................................... 81
5.5. Socio-cultural, political and religious factors ............ 88
Chapter V: Conclusion ........................................... 91
Limitations ..................................................... 93
References ...................................................... 95

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