"Language is such an exposure thing"

Linguist about the case of Dmitriev

On the problems of linguistic examination in trials and what conclusions linguists on high-profile matters recently made, Irina Levontina , the Veda, told the tremor. scientific. sore. Institute of the Russian Language of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Talked by Natalia Demina . The conversation was held on July 22, 2020 in Petrozavodsk after the announcement of the sentence to Yuri Dmitriev, the head of the Karelian branch of the Memorial company.

Along with Irina, the authors of the linguistic opinion submitted to the court in the Dmitriev case were Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexander Moldovan , a member of the corr. RAS Anna Dybo and Ch. scientific. sore. Irya RAS Alexey Shmelev .

- Today the verdict was announced in the Dmitriev case. You were in court, acted as a specialist at the request of protection. Please tell us who invited you and how, on what materials were the conclusion of specialists?

-We were addressed by Dmitriev’s lawyer Viktor Anufriev with a request to analyze the case materials for how free the girl’s testimony is, how free her conversation with the psychologist and investigator was normal and natural from the point of view of the structure of questions and the nature of the answers, whether there can be identified any speech manipulations of adults to obtain the necessary answers.

We analyzed the materials transferred to us by the lawyer (seven texts of 2016-2018), consistently considered all the videos of the girl’s conversations with a psychologist. Our conclusions were transferred to the court and attached to the case. Partially (in terms of the structure of the communicative situation) the results of our analysis were quoted in the article in Novaya Gazeta [ 1 ].

I can’t talk about the content of materials, I can only comment on the investigation methods and tell about my impressions. The girls' video interrogations are really impressive. I see many people who supported Yuri Alekseevich both on social networks and in real life, they do not believe that he could do something like that. Their support is kept on faith or trust, on acquaintance with Dmitriev himself or his relatives or friends, in some publications. I am in a winning position compared to others: I saw the materials on which the charge was built. Although I cannot tell about the content of materials, I am not obliged to hide my impression.

In my opinion, any person who would look at these materials would see that a good and very pretty girl tries not to slander Yuri Alekseevich superfluous, but the investigator and psychologist simply blow out the answers they need. She often does not understand what she is asked about, and they endlessly ask the same thing and so. She answers monosyllables - they overwhelm her answers. She says: “I don’t know” - they ask again, and again and again they offer her options so that in the end she simply calls the most neutral option.

- An option convenient for accusation?

- Certainly. And then it continues and continues, and it looks rather terrible. Moreover, a woman-psychologist who talks to her directly inspires her to say that we need to say and, most importantly, what to feel, she even speaks for her. Any person, not even being a psychologist, knows that such testimonies should be given in the genre of a free story, that there cannot be leading questions. And in this case, the psychologist constantly speaks for the girl, as if trying to make the girl into the text of the text, actually learned him. We see how the girl simply teaches the text from conversation to conversation. She does not even know any words in the first conversations, she learns them.

We analyzed the interrogation protocols and found out that they almost did not have their own text of the girl. She very often answers: “No,” “I don’t know.” Sometimes "yes." And if there are any other words, then these are usually words that sound in matters (by the way, we calculated the ratio of different types of answers). There are almost no words that the girl would say on her own initiative. They are where she answers the question of what circles she went to. And where the psychologist or investigator relate to the main topic of accusations, the girl herself says practically nothing. Sometimes she sluggishly, reluctantly repeats the words confirming, but basically do not confirm what they say to her.

And in these protocols there is an amazing thing that reveals the mechanics of the investigation and accusation. There were protocols that record what was said during the video recording, and there are those that are made without video when the grandmother supposedly made a statement that there was no need to record conversations on the video, because such a video will injure the girl. And we analyzed the difference between the protocols with the video and without. The difference is unusual! Where the record is made in strict accordance with the video, we see the girl’s words: “No”, “no”, “yes”, “no”, “no”, “I don’t remember”, “I don’t know”, “I don’t know”, “no”, “rarely”, “no”. And so on. And where the protocols were made without a video, the text on behalf of the girl is in whole paragraphs, a cloth language, clearly written by the investigator himself. The girl could hardly say that, she has not yet owned such a speech of speech, she cannot give rise to such proposals at all. And the hidden mechanisms of compiling this accusation become very clear.

By the way, I can’t say that the psychologist was unskilled. Just the opposite. She just purposefully achieved the goal that had to be achieved. You look directly, and it seems that you hear the crunch of bones, how she turns the girl, how she squeezes her. Literally she dictates what needs to be said. I can’t specifically quote her conversation with the girl, but there are some things that she dictates to her, and she gradually remembers.

- You are a linguist, not a psychologist, but can you evaluate if the child receives a psychological trauma at the time of such conversations, in your opinion?

- Well, I’m really not a psychologist, it’s better to ask those psychologists who made their conclusions about the injury. As far as I understand, they noted that the lady who conducted conversations violated all the canons, all the rules for conducting such surveys and conversations.

If you move away from our conclusion and just say about a personal human impression, I liked the girl. From the videos it can be seen that she does not want to speak excess, she turns out in every possible way and holds surprisingly steadily. She answers with everything that is possible. She generally says little. I’m not saying what they ask about events when it was very small. She can no longer distinguish her own memories from what she was told and tried to inspire. She is confused. She is trying to finish the conversation as soon as possible. She sits, staring at her phone, clinging to him, like some kind of lifebuoy, and looks at the screen. In general, it seems to me that any person who would see this would immediately understand what was happening ... I repeat, this is not what we wrote about in conclusion, there was just dry linguistics, and these are my personal feelings.

- How did the court session with your participation?

- In fact, I liked the judge: when he interviewed me at the meeting, it was clear that he was interested in understanding the case. He asked sensible questions, and, it seems to me, he absolutely understood what was happening.

I talked about specific examples of manipulations in these videos, some of which may be included in the textbooks. There is a verbal game, a substitution of words. An alternative question is asked. "How often?" - "Don't know". - "Well, so much or so much?" A person chooses from these two options. But in fact, neither one or another option may not correspond to really what is happening. The option is never proposed. That is, the girl does not speak herself, but chooses from two proposed options that do not exhaust all possible, and a false alternative is created. And there are a lot of such manipulations. At the trial, I even quoted Carlson's famous question - a question that you can’t answer no nor no: “Have you stopped drinking cognac in the morning?”

In addition, one word is often replaced by another. The girl says one word, and they change him to another, giving the statement a completely different meaning and sound. Due to the sensitivity of the topic and the obligation of non-disclosure, I cannot give specific examples.

- And the topic is so thin that it is possible in one word, in one shade to distort what has been said?

- Certainly. We examined these manipulations. We calculated how many answers are “no” and “yes”, what is the percentage of answers, where there is new information that is not contained in matters. And thus dissected all the material. And then the court made his conclusions about the information content of the testimony.

- And what lesson, in your opinion, gives an analysis of these conversations with the child on sensitive topics?

- The problem is always the same. This is the problem of independence of the examination. We know well that in the device of the Institute of Expertise the equality of the parties is now violated, the human right to defense is violated, because only an investigator or court can appoint an examination. The lawyer cannot appoint an examination, the lawyer may petition the court to appoint an examination, offer his experts, the party to his prosecution, and the judge will decide. Well, a lawyer can invite a specialist who has the status not the same as the expert.

In addition, experts worked with the texts of the girl’s interrogations. Both psychologists and we linguists, at the request of the lawyer, analyzed the secondary material that was. There was no communication with the girl directly. That is, the defense side was in an unequal position with the prosecution.

In addition to the problem of independence of the examination, there is also the problem of qualifying experts. We often come across her. If there was a real competitiveness of the parties and the possibility of real examinations, then each party would be interested in inviting qualified experts. And if there is no competitiveness, then the prosecution can invite their dedicated experts, appoint linguists or psychologists in civilian clothes and this does not meet the court of any resistance. And lawyers are desperately trying to find good specialists. At the trial, Dmitriev was lucky in the fact that the judge heard all the specialists whom the lawyer invited. This, by the way, does not always happen. We perfectly remember the cases when judges simply refuse to listen to specialists who came to court and are waiting in the corridor. This judge, at least, listened to us.

- Based on the analysis of the video interrogation of the girl, how do you evaluate the verdict that has been heard?

- I evaluate it as practically acquittal: we all understand that Yu. A. could not justify in all respects, because there are fewer pre -percent of the exciting sentences. Moreover, the matter is loud, especially since the person spent several years in jail. And if it suddenly justifies it now, there would be a huge number of problems - both practical and reputational - for the law enforcement system. I was hoping that they would leave one of one item of the charges and give him such a period that he could be released already in the courtroom. It turned out a little wrong. But if this sentence remains in force, then after a couple of months Yu.A. will come out. In general, this is not bad compared to what the prosecutor’s office requested: 15 years in a colony.

- How do you assess the current trends in the use of linguistics (more precisely, “linguistics”) as a weapon against the accused? We now see a lot of high -profile processes where the opinion of the “linguists” from the accusation helps to plant a person in jail.

- In fact, it is separately impossible to solve this problem. This requires an adversarial process, real justice, and so on. But it seems to me that now important processes are taking place in the scientific community. On the one hand, in recent years, “linguistics” really plays a terrible role in many processes, because now they often began to judge for the thoughts: “extremism”, and “justification of terrorism”, and “insulting feelings”, and everything else, when they judge “for words”. And there, of course, in many matters, almost the only evidence on which the whole thing is being built is a linguistic examination. It is often done by people who do not have specialized education, who already do not conduct scientific research.

However, there are positive changes. For a very long time, the academic world did not know anything at all or did not pay attention to the fact that there was such an applied “linguistics”. Now the situation has changed. We remember from the last high -profile matters that academic linguists are already actively involved in counteracting such “linguistics”. In particular, in the case of Yegor Zhukov, several reviews of linguists were published [ 2 ] for the examination that was based on the prosecution.

Finally, a great science began to pay attention to this departmental science, which is often completely untenable from a scientific point of view, even sometimes uses the terms completely in which they are used in science. Such control by the scientific community was previously completely absent. Now the situation begins to change. However, this is a complex and long process.

- That is, the scientific community itself is trying to make sure that it is not ashamed?

- Yes. About twenty years I periodically wrote, urged my colleagues to pay attention to what is happening in judicial linguistics. And now the linguists saw this, horrified and began to somehow counteract this. (Well, here, of course, is not about me.)

- We can say that your participation and the participation of other specialists in this case played a large role in the verdict in the Dmitriev case, that a more terrible time was not announced?

- I don't know. Always, when the decision is made, you never know the extent to what this or that proof influenced. Everything works together. Everyone did what he could, and turned out to be such a result.

- Can you comment on the work of “new greatness”? You participated as a specialist. Last week, the debate ended, and the defendants of the case performed with their last word ...

- Yes, it’s easier to say here, this process is open. The case of "new greatness" is very large, there are a lot of accused. As a specialist, I analyzed a very specific thing - a small correspondence in the messenger between the youngest defendant in this case Anya Pavlikova, who at the time of arrest was a minor, and a provocateur. And she proved on the structure of this correspondence that he draws her into the case.

She repeatedly tried to get out of this group, and the notorious Ruslan D. used different tricky techniques, manipulations, forcing her to remain as part of this group, agree to some actions, and so on. In conclusion, it was analyzed in detail how it was done.

In my opinion, this Ruslan D. is a rather effective manipulator. Language is such an exposing thing, and when you analyze the words of a person, you consider all words, study verbal techniques-everything becomes somehow very clear. I hope that Ana Pavlikova my work as a linguist will help at least a little.