If You Know SUE – Then You Know When to Hold

(3 min read)

by Stan B. Walters – The Lie Guy®
ORCID 0009-0002-1063-0519

Evidence Has a Timing Problem

Investigators work hard to develop evidence. Yet one of the easiest ways to reduce its investigative value is to reveal it too soon. Traditional accusatory interviewing often does exactly that: confront the subject, lay out the evidence, identify contradictions, and press for an explanation. The problem is that once evidence is disclosed, it becomes information available to the person being interviewed. Strategic Use of Evidence (SUE) turns that sequence around by asking a deceptively simple question: When should the person being interviewed learn what the investigator already knows? That question matters for at least three reasons. Holding evidence can preserve investigative leverage rather than surrendering it at the beginning of an interview. Controlling the disclosure of case information can help prevent contamination of victim and witness accounts. And when interviewing a suspect, obtaining an account before revealing contradictory evidence creates an opportunity to test that account against independently established facts. Evidence has value not only because of what it proves, but because of when and how it is used.

Don’t Give Away Your Hand

The accusatory model has traditionally encouraged investigators to establish authority by demonstrating how much they already know. Evidence gets placed on the table early: We have the video. We talked to the witness. We found your fingerprints. We know you were there. It may sound powerful, but strategically it can be expensive. Every fact disclosed gives the subject another piece of the investigative picture and another opportunity to adapt. A subject who initially did not know investigators had surveillance footage can now construct an explanation that accommodates the footage. Someone unaware that investigators know a particular time, location, person, or event can incorporate that information into a revised account. The interviewer has effectively shown the other player the cards. SUE takes a different approach. Obtain the account first. Explore it. Develop the details. Identify what the person is willing to commit to before disclosing evidence that may confirm or contradict those claims. Evidence held temporarily retains leverage. Evidence disclosed cannot be taken back.

Protect the Account From Contamination

Holding evidence is not simply a strategy for interviewing suspects. It can also protect the reliability of information obtained from victims and witnesses. Every case fact the interviewer reveals has the potential to become information available to the person being interviewed. Tell a witness what another witness reported, disclose something found at the scene, or embed known evidence in a question, and subsequent details may no longer be clearly attributable to that person’s independent memory. The investigator has now become another source of information. Obtain the person’s account first. Explore what the person independently remembers and how those details were learned before introducing information developed elsewhere in the investigation. Evidence can always be disclosed later when there is a legitimate investigative reason. Once disclosed, however, it cannot be removed from the person’s knowledge. Before you disclose what you know, find out what they know. Don’t let the investigator become the source of new evidence.

Let the Evidence Test the Account

The same discipline becomes especially powerful when a suspect provides an account that may be unreliable. Rather than immediately announcing, That’s not true—we have evidence proving otherwise, allow the account to develop. Ask for the narrative. Explore the details. Clarify times, locations, actions, people, and sequence. Give the subject opportunities to provide information that can later be checked independently. Only then does strategically disclosed evidence become a means of pressure-testing the account. A reliable account should have opportunities to connect with independently established facts; an unreliable account may require revision, explanation, avoidance, or accommodation as contradictory evidence is introduced. Importantly, an inconsistency is not automatically proof of deception. Memory errors, misunderstanding, incomplete knowledge, and other factors must still be considered. The objective is not to manufacture contradictions. It is to avoid contaminating the account before investigators have had the opportunity to evaluate it. Reliability is diagnosed in the statement. Confirmation comes from the evidence.

Know When to HOLD

Strategic Use of Evidence requires a different mindset from the traditional evidence dump. Having powerful evidence does not create an obligation to reveal it immediately. Sometimes its greatest investigative value exists precisely because the interviewer knows something the person being interviewed does not yet know the interviewer knows. Preserve that advantage long enough to obtain the person’s account. With victims and witnesses, control the information you disclose so their statements remain as independent and uncontaminated as possible. With suspects, establish the account before using independently developed evidence to challenge its reliability. Then disclose evidence deliberately, at the point where it serves a clear investigative purpose. Good interviewing is not a poker game, but poker offers one useful lesson: having a strong hand and knowing how to play that hand are two very different skills. If you know SUE, then you would know when to HOLD.

Choices made in the interview room eventually play out in a courtroom.™

© Copyright 2026 by Stan B. Walters – All Rights Reserved