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Ohio Court Admits Lie Detector Tests As Evidence
An anonymous reader writes "Last month, an Ohio court set a new precedent by allowing polygraph test results to be entered as evidence in a criminal trial. Do lie detectors really belong in the court room? AntiPolygraph.org critiques the polygraph evidence from the this precedential case (Ohio v. Sharma)."
...as long as people are still searching for some magical way to get the truth out of somebody. Won't happen short of the next fifty years of neurological research.
There is no replacement for displacement.
antipolygraph.com? Well, anyway, this is quite unfortunate, especially if polygraphs are as unreliable as they have always been...and I haven't seen or heard anything to suggest that they aren't.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
Getting evidence admitted is one thing, but getting a jury to believe it or give it any weight or credibility is something else entirely.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
"Do lie detectors really belong in the court room?"
No. Next question please.
I once interviewed for a job and was told that I would be required to handwrite a statement so it could be analyzed by their "handwriting expert." I promptly got up and left. They looked shocked. Apparently they initially tried polygraphing applicants, but found it to be too expensive. Years later I bumped into the HR person at another job and asked her about the success of the vetting process. She said it didn't work and if anything made things worse.
Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest. --Denis Diderot
It doesn't "detect lies"!!! It detects physiological changes ONLY! Determining what those changes actually mean is entirely subjective and open to varied interpretations!
You're using her as bait, Master!
Exactly there's many things that can produce a false positive. While they try to make the process relaxed (comfortable chair, no noise, etc) there's plenty of factors to why a person can be stressed. If they ask "have you ever abused your kid" to a person that went through horrible child abuse, its reasonable to expect stress. Asking questions to a person with poor english skills may stress them out. Thats before even considering the factors they measure may even be caused by other things then stress. Breath rate, perspiration, heart rate... maybe they're just aroused? (Ok hopefully not on the child abuse question)
I've been through a poly and talked with others that have and in my experience they look for the largest spike and dwell on that question. They'll tell the person that they think they're lying on it (which obviously makes it harder to pass that question when they repeat it). They'll try to convince you its just better to "confess". Then they'll eventually give up and say you passed (the question never gave a response high enough to cross the threshhold, just enough that they dwelled). Everyone I've talked to had a similar experience, where they were told they were lying on a ridiculous question.
However as long as a poly gets people to confess, it's doing its job (these are background poly's)... so they're unlikely to get rid of them. The people in charge know they can't be trusted but know they also get some small results. Most spy cases the spies passed the poly because if you know what it is, it's easy to fool.
Worse, they tend to work worse when the subject is already under stress
My understanding is that they are really stress detectors. The flawed assumption is that stress indicates deception.
It doesn't matter if the side offering the evidence is the defense or the prosecution - once the evidence is accepted it sets a (potentially dangerous) precedent.
You can learn a lot about a person if you just take the time to inject them with sodium pentathol
Exactly! Just like a cop can't say in court "The defendant is a liar because he looks like one", a strss/lie detector should also be inadmissible in court. It still remains useuful to law enforcement though.