{"id":8917,"date":"2021-01-06T11:56:18","date_gmt":"2021-01-06T10:56:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hieronymus.ch\/legal-english-shot-have-you-ever-witnessed-a-witness-wrongfully-called-an-informant\/"},"modified":"2021-04-28T08:23:59","modified_gmt":"2021-04-28T06:23:59","slug":"legal-english-shot-have-you-ever-witnessed-a-witness-wrongfully-called-an-informant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hieronymus.ch\/fr\/legal-english-shot-have-you-ever-witnessed-a-witness-wrongfully-called-an-informant\/","title":{"rendered":"Legal English Shot – Have you ever witnessed a witness wrongfully called an informant?"},"content":{"rendered":"

What to call an Auskunftsperson<\/em> or personne appel\u00e9e \u00e0 donner des renseignements<\/em> in English?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Any person who is required to give information to the police or to testify at a trial is referred to as a \u201cwitness<\/strong>\u201d in English.<\/p>\n

Under British law, in order to give evidence, witnesses must be \u201ccompetent<\/strong>\u201d, i.e. able to understand and answer the questions put to them as witnesses (compare to Art. 163 of the Swiss Criminal Procedure Code [CrimPC]: Zeugnisf\u00e4higkeit; capacit\u00e9 de t\u00e9moigner). The person charged in criminal proceedings (accused or co-accused) is not competent to give evidence for the prosecution in the proceedings (compare to CrimPC Art. 157 et seqq. regarding the rights of the accused to remain silent: Einvernahme der beschuldigten Person; audition du pr\u00e9venu).<\/p>\n

Witnesses are said to be \u201ccompellable<\/strong>\u201d if they can be sworn and required to give truthful answers to all admissible questions, on pain of being punished for contempt of court if they refuse to do so, and for perjury if they lie (compare CrimPC Art. 163: Zeugnispflicht, obligation de t\u00e9moigner).<\/p>\n

The spouse or civil partner of the person charged, for instance, cannot be required by the prosecution to testify against the Defendant, since the witness can invoke the right to withhold testimony (\u201cnon-compellable witness<\/strong>\u201d, compare CrimPC Art. 168: Zeugnisverweigerungsrecht; droit de refuser de t\u00e9moigner).<\/p>\n

Witnesses are said to be \u201cprivileged<\/strong>\u201d if (though competent and compellable) they may lawfully refuse to answer certain questions, by invoking, for instance, the privilege against self-incrimination (or pleading the 5th Amendment in the US), and\/or are immune from penalties in case of refusal to testify (see CrimPC Art. 180(2) for the rules applicable to private claimants in criminal proceedings [Privatkl\u00e4gerschaft, partie plaignante]).<\/p>\n

\u201cPrivileged witness<\/strong>\u201d is therefore the best translation for Auskunftsperson or personne appel\u00e9e \u00e0 donner des renseignements as defined under CrimPC Art. 178.<\/p>\n

There is no reason to use the cumbersome \u201cperson called upon to give information\u201d that can be \u201cwitnessed\u201d in some unfortunate translations.<\/p>\n

In this context, the term \u201cinformant<\/strong>\u201d should also definitely be avoided. An informant (also referred to as an \u201cinformer\u201d, \u201cCHS\u201d [Confidential Human Source] or \u201cCI\u201d [Criminal Informant]) is someone who provides incriminating information about someone else to the police, either voluntarily or for some reward (Informant, V-Mann or Spitzel; indicateur, indic or mouchard). While it is true that informants may end up as witnesses, and sometimes even as privileged witnesses, most witnesses are only rarely also informants.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What to call an Auskunftsperson or personne appel\u00e9e \u00e0 donner des renseignements in English? Any person who is required to give information to the police or to testify at a trial is referred to as a \u201cwitness\u201d in English. Under British law, in order to give evidence, witnesses must be \u201ccompetent\u201d, i.e. able to understand […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","mc4wp_mailchimp_campaign":[]},"categories":[189,191],"tags":[173],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hieronymus.ch\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8917"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hieronymus.ch\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hieronymus.ch\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hieronymus.ch\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hieronymus.ch\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8917"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hieronymus.ch\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8917\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9459,"href":"https:\/\/hieronymus.ch\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8917\/revisions\/9459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hieronymus.ch\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hieronymus.ch\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hieronymus.ch\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}