The Witness Statement Vocabulary
You are a detective preparing a report for a battery case. A witness told you: 'The suspect appeared irate and was acting strange. He shouted something incoherent and then flailed his arms.' The defense attorney has filed a motion arguing that your report uses vague, subjective language that cannot support probable cause. You must revise the report using precise, observable vocabulary. You also need to decide between 'incoherent' and 'unintelligible' to describe the suspect's speech: the witness said the suspect's words were slurred and could not be understood, but the suspect did speak in complete sentences. Finally, you must replace 'appeared irate' with a behavioral description.
1. Explain why 'appeared irate' is less precise than a behavioral description, and provide a behavioral description that would support the same inference.
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'Irate' is an inference about the suspect's emotional state, not an observable fact. A report that relies on inferences invites challenges that the officer or witness was speculating. A behavioral description states what was seen and heard: for example, "The suspect's face was flushed, he spoke in a loud voice, and he clenched his fists at his sides." These details allow a reader to draw the inference independently and are harder to dismiss as subjective.
2. Choose between 'incoherent' and 'unintelligible' for the suspect's speech, and justify your choice based on the witness's statement.
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'Unintelligible' is the better choice. 'Unintelligible' means the words could not be understood, which matches the witness's statement that the words were slurred. 'Incoherent' means lacking logical connection or clarity, which implies the content itself was disordered. Because the witness said the suspect spoke in complete sentences, the problem was pronunciation, not logic. Using 'unintelligible' accurately describes the slurred speech without overstating that the suspect was making no sense.
3. Rewrite the sentence 'The suspect appeared irate and was acting strange' to be more objective and specific, using at least two observable behaviors.
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"The suspect's face was flushed, his voice was loud, and he repeatedly clenched and unclenched his fists while pacing in a circle."
This revision replaces the subjective labels 'irate' and 'strange' with specific, observable details that a reader can evaluate. It avoids guessing at the suspect's emotions and provides concrete facts that support any later inference.