Alien encounter narratives in a forensic environment

The reluctance of the vast majority of SETI researchers to take non-repeatable personal alien encounter narratives into account is a staple trope in the alien encounter debate. However, the proof of the pudding would seem to lie in investigating the very practical consequences of the use of encounter testimony of all sorts in legal proceedings, for example, when examining how courts would react to a claim that somebody had a car accident because she was buzzed by a UFO or distracted by a sighting while driving etc. The German Federal Court of Justice in the famous “Sirius”case already had occasion to test the impact of a victim’s firmly held belief in the alien origin of a fraudster on the latter’s criminal liability. In the age of increasingly ubiquitous dashcam footage, for example, we might now even have new sources of evidence to complement the personal narrative. The paper will engage with the rules of the holistic evaluation of evidence in court proceedings and take a look at the principles of forensic witness psychology and how the interplay might influence the outcome of a case in real life. After an initial survey of past court cases involving alien encounters of any kind, it will focus on the German legal system, because trial judges there have to give extensive reasons for their judgment, there is no “black box” of secret jury deliberations, and because the author will be able to draw on his own experience as a German trial and appellate judge.