witness appeal
Non-legal term for a public police call for people with information to come forward
A witness appeal is a non-legal but widely used term for a situation in which the police or the prosecution service publicly call on people with knowledge of a case to come forward with information. The term appears frequently in crime journalism and true crime media as a convenient label for this type of investigative step, but under Danish law it is not a legally defined term. The Danish Administration of Justice Act (retsplejeloven) instead uses concepts such as witness, the duty to testify and exemption from testifying to regulate witnesses' legal obligations towards the courts.
The duty to testify itself — the obligation to give evidence before the court — follows from the Administration of Justice Act § 168 in chapter 18 on witnesses, which establishes that everyone is in principle obliged to testify unless statutory grounds for exemption apply. A witness appeal typically takes place before any trial and is addressed to the public at large, whereas the witness rules of the Administration of Justice Act are only activated once a person has been summoned to give evidence before the court.
