Fourth course

The testimony consists of a declaratory evidence which has long been debated in the legal field, either around its method of production or presentation, or around its validity for the purposes of the fact finding. The principles governing the trial in Italy - orality, immediacy and contradiction - according to current case law, are the best method of presentation of the evidence, and testimony is sometimes considered the “queen” among the evidence.

According to the principle of orality, the evidence presentation must be developed through the verbal communication of the thought, with the possibility of asking questions and listening to the declarant, guaranteeing the procedural dialectic. The principle of immediacy in turn guarantees contact between the judge and the (testimonial) evidence for the purposes of fact finding. That contact would guarantee the truth, according to some trend of thought. Finally, adversarial principle guarantees (and requires) the participation of the parties in the presentation of the evidence, and specifically in that of the testimonial evidence, for the purposes of a fair trial. It is considered that these three principles allow, in the best possible way, to reach the truth allowing the fact finder to assess the credibility of the declarant and the reliability of the statement.

This course will discuss the extent to which these principles are informed by the many knowledge (derived from scientific research in the fields of testimonial psychology and neuroscience) related to the thought and knowledge processes underlying a witness statement, as well as knowledge of the relationship between the practice of testimony and its validity, and of the mental processes underlying the formulation of the fact finding. These are the topics of a course that offers up-to-date knowledge and important points for reflection on the topic of the validity and assessment of the testimonial evidence.