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The case so far
There were about a dozen more statements, from other members of the public who came over to help at the time or who contacted the station afterwards when they heard about it on the local radio or read about it in the Oxford Times. They were all pretty consistent about what happened – too consistent in some cases. It was clear that some accounts had been influenced by witnesses talking amongst themselves during the confused period while everyone was milling around by the bench, waiting for the police and then, afterwards, waiting for the purse to be found. The statements from those who came forward after reading the news reports clearly owed much to what had been written in the report on the Oxford Times website.
People usually think that the reason the police don’t like letting the public know details of a case before the perpetrator has been convicted is that we’re afraid that it will give suspects information that will help them to tell convincing lies – or else that we’re worried about copycat offending that will obscure the main investigation – or maybe time-wasters pretending to have witnessed something when they didn’t. In fact, usually what is a lot more important is the effect that hearing about, or reading about, or discussing an incident has on the memories of perfectly honest witnesses who only want to help.
Take this case, for instance. If you had been one of the hundreds of people walking in the parks that afternoon and you had seen a kerfuffle going on across the grass from where you were, and seen a couple of beefy young men chasing a tramp, you might well have thought nothing much of it. But then, when you read a day or two later that at woman has been assaulted by a homeless man in the parks and that two have-a-go heroes gave chase and wrestled him to the ground, you start to think that must have been what you saw last Saturday afternoon. And then, when you read that the homeless man tripped the woman up and then stole her purse from her bag while she was lying helpless on the ground, your start picturing the incident in your mind. And before you know where you are, your actually memory of the event (which is really very sketchy indeed) has been overwritten in your head by your imagined picture prompted by reading the report. Then, if you’re a good citizen – or if you rather fancy yourself giving evidence in court – you toddle off down to the local nick and ask to make a statement.
Of course, none of you would allow your imagination to run riot like that, but planet of perfectly honest people do.
DS Davenport – Anna – was fairly certain that Michael Lambert had stolen the woman’s purse and then thrown it away when he got scared that he was going to be caught, but she was not completely satisfied that the stories that she had on file told the whole truth. Moreover, even if they were accurate, she knew that a good defence team would find a forensic psychologist willing to give expert evidence that the witness statements were contaminated by what is called in the jargon co-witnessing. That means that witnesses may have been influenced by hearing what other witnesses said about the incident when they made their own statements. For example, the two schoolgirls, Aimee and Katie, admit to having talked together during the incident and will almost certainly have discussed it further on their way home and probably at home as well. They also heard what other people were saying about what happened. This means that what they said is really a joint statement, so the fact that their two accounts are very similar doesn’t make it more likely to be accurate than if we only had evidence form one of them.
There was quite sufficient evidence, however, to keep Lambert in for questioning. Anna decided to interview him, adopting a non-confrontational approach in the hope that, if he relaxed he might tell them more than if he was constantly on the defensive. She also had in mind the need to make sure that if he were to confess there would be no chance that he might retract it later and claim that he had been put under duress. She’s a very good officer and manages to think beyond simply getting enough evidence to charge a suspect. It’s all too easy to build a case that then falls apart when you get to court.