“Not a Perfect Record”: Linguistic Fallacies in the Acceptance of Police Notes of Conversations as Evidence

This paper examines the fallacy of assuming the accuracy and completeness of police officers’ notes of conversations as reliable records of spoken interaction, particularly in investigative contexts. Drawing on a forensic linguistic expert report submitted in Irving v Pfingst [2020] QSC 280, a case against the police for misconduct in the Plaintiff Terry Irving's wrongful conviction for robbery and accessory conduct, this article provides linguistic analysis of a series of typed and handwritten notes purportedly made by police officers following a multihour interaction with Irving in 1993. The notes were presented as verbatim accounts created without the use of recording devices. The linguistic features of the document, however, contradict this claim, demonstrating characteristics of recorded and transcribed conversation. Despite the trial judge accepting the expert's qualifications, the analysis was excluded or downplayed on the basis that, among other things, it did not require expert knowledge, and this decision was upheld on Appeal ( Irving v Pfingst & Anor , 2021