The Role of Credibility and Believability in the Trial of Rosemary West

made worldwide headlines and have already provided abundant material for the ‘true crime’ industry. The case will continue to resurface from time to time in the media as some newsworthy development is picked up by reporters: signifi cant events in the lives of Knox or Sollecito, or of Meredith Kercher’s family, a new ‘revelation’ about what ‘really happened’, or a new book or fi lm about the case. And, as happened from almost the day on which Meredith’s body was discovered, people who have never known any of the key fi gures in this case, have never lived in Perugia, may not have visited Italy, will debate and judge Knox’s and Sollecito’s guilt or innocence. We argue that they do so not because of some morbid fascination with violent crime, but because of a deep- seated anxiety, probably unrecognised, about the status of truth. The truth must, they would hope, be ultimately found and with that will come a secure judgement about the moral or immoral character of Amanda Knox and Raff aele Sollecito. For, in the absence of certainty, when truths are made rather than found, morality’s place in human experience becomes considerably more precarious.

The content of this book

The chapters that follow explore diff erent aspects of the construction of guilt and innocence, most of which have been the focus of considerable attention among researchers in law, criminology, sociology or psychology. The fi rst half of the book is based on a perspective that sees guilt and innocence as broadly narrative and rhetorical accomplishments. We begin with the Florida trial of Casey Anthony in Chapter 1 , using it to review and apply the infl uential work of Bennett and Feldman, who interpret the legal requisites for establishing guilt in terms of a dramatistic framework involving the accused’s presence at the scene of the crime, the act of committing the crime, and the intent to commit the crime. This ‘storytelling’ approach emerged in part to challenge the long- held view that guilt and innocence are decided only on the basis of evidence. We believe that it helps to understand why Casey Anthony was acquitted. In Chapter 2 we use the 1960s case of Londoner James Hanratty, executed for murder, to look at the comparative merits of the evidentiary and storytelling approaches as they arguably played out, not only in his conviction but also in the public debate during the next 40 years about whether or not this was a case of miscarriage of justice. In Chapter 3 , we take the famous case of H.H. Crippen, convicted and executed for murder in London in 1910, to focus on the problems of changing the story as the investigation or trial develops. Such changes are perceived to refl ect inconsistency and signal a lack of credibility, a factor that was also present in the Hanratty case. In Chapter 4 , we use the case of Rosemary West, convicted in the 1990s of ten murders in the city of Gloucester, to broaden the focus by exploring the psychological and sociological research