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)."

Comments

Ohio, eh?

[ScrewMaster]

I was thinking about moving to a different State, but hadn't figured out which one. Now I'm down to 49 possibilities.

Re:Ohio, eh?

[PsychoSlashDot]

I was thinking about moving to a different State, but hadn't figured out which one. Now I'm down to 49 possibilities.

Given your subject line of "Ohio, eh?" and you're moving to a different state, and that you're down to 49 possibilities, I can only conclude you're one of those that view Canada as the 51st state. Come on up, we've got plenty of room, beer, and freshly-clubbed baby seals to go around. You do like hockey, eh?

Re:Ohio, eh?

[siyavash]

Maybe the free state project in New Hampshire is something you'll like : http://www.freestateproject.org./

Lie Dectectors will persist...

[bossesjoe]

...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.

Re:Lie Dectectors will persist...

[Maxo-Texas]

Give me a two by four and I can have you begging me to believe you are Osama Bin Ladin in under 60 minutes!

Re:Lie Dectectors will persist...

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

There are FOUR lights.

Re:Lie Dectectors will persist...

[hlh_nospam]

The only thing worse than lie detector technology that doesn't work reliably, is lie detector technology that *does* work reliably. The only reason societies don't outlaw certain types of thought is that they are not detectable -- yet.

Nice, unbiased source.

[Elemenope]

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.

Re:Nice, unbiased source.

[hedwards]

I remember seeing a clip of Groucho being subjected to a polygraph from the 50s, and while funny, it didn't inspire any sort of confidence in the technology.

I agree, that considering how many minor things are consider to taint the jury, a polygraph is probably just about the worst of them. The reliability just isn't there, and even when they are accurate, they don't really give any indication of what the lie actually is.

Worse, they tend to work worse when the subject is already under stress. Overall, the technology just isn't there, and won't ever get there. If anything is more reliable, it'll be of a different form, probably something that scans the brain directly. Even that though is going to be tough.

Re:Nice, unbiased source.

[gvc]

Worse, they tend to work worse when the subject is already under stress.

The above statement presupposes that lie detectors work at all. This presupposition is unsupported by evidence. So the statement is akin to "mediums are not as able to recall the dead if there's a skeptic in the room."

Re:Nice, unbiased source.

[Kythe]

Antipolygraph.org makes no pretense as to being "unbiased"--they're an advocacy group. But the information they provide is scrupulously documented and referenced, and it comes from some of the most credentialed scientific sources. They've done their homework.

Re:Nice, unbiased source.

[amchugh]

There was a wired article on fMRI lie detectors.

Weight vs admissibility

[deblau]

Getting evidence admitted is one thing, but getting a jury to believe it or give it any weight or credibility is something else entirely.

Re:Weight vs admissibility

[Elemenope]

That's fantastic! That means only people who can't afford better lawyers than the schmucks on TV will be imprisoned, and who cares about them, anyway?

But, to lose the sarcasm for a moment, most defendant protections in criminal law were developed so as to defend even the indigent, since they are the most vulnerable to unfairness seeing as how their lawyers either suck or are overworked (or both). If a method of obtaining evidence is bad enough that a decently trained lawyer can demonstrate its utter ridiculousness, it does not belong in a courtroom in the first place. The competence of the defendant's lawyer should not be depended upon as the single fail-safe employed to determine whether a person should be deprived of their freedom.

Re:Weight vs admissibility

[Foobar of Borg]

This might just be a Pennsylvania thing then. I know I always thought it was retarded, but it's how they do things here. I guess I just assumed it was like that everywhere.

Well, in Pennsylvania (except perhaps Philadelphia and Pittsburgh), a juror cannot even drive a car to the courthouse since they don't want the judge's horse disturbed and upset by those loud, new-fangled "automobiles".

Re:Weight vs admissibility

[All_One_Mind]

I failed a polygraph when I was telling the truth. I was looking at 14 years in prison, so the pressure was intense and I was nervous as fuck. The end result: The polygraph said I was lying about not shooting some guy I had never met in the face.

I can't even imagine what would've happened if that would've been considered "evidence" admissible in court. I'd probably be in prison right now.

Re:Weight vs admissibility

[m0nk3ym1nd]

Yow, the (bad) memories this brings back! Back when VCRs were called VTRs, weighed 40 pounds and cost >$1000, I failed two polygraph tests regarding thefts of video equipment that were repeatedly occurring where I worked. I wasn't charged with anything, although I did have detectives banging on my door at 1:00am asking me if there was maybe something I wanted to get off my chest? Can we just look around a little bit?

I had not commited the thefts. However, it hadn't escaped my notice that those VTRs cost more than two months' living expenses, and my thoughts had lingered once or twice on how easy it would be to get the equipment out of the building. I was a bit of a punk, and looked it.

During the interrogation, I felt so guilty about having considered the very thefts that eventually occurred, and was so claustrophobic -- there's a bellows-thingy around your chest and a blood-pressue cuff and other restraints reminiscent of the electric chair -- and the guy stood between me and the door for good measure! -- and I was so nervous about emitting a damning response that when the questions moved on from "what is your name" to "did you steal", I could actually hear those blasted pens going scribble-scribble. Biofeedback of the worst kind! From then on I chanted "Om Mane Padme Hum" in my head with such intensity that I could barely hear the guy, and I guess that worked to flatten my responses -- the polygraph results were deemed "Inconclusive". Not good enough for my employer....

No

[spyfrog]

"Do lie detectors really belong in the court room?"

No. Next question please.

Re:No

[StikyPad]

You're in a desert walking along in the sand when all of the sudden you look down, and you see a tortoise crawling toward you. You reach down and flip the tortoise over on its back. The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can't, not without your help. But you're not helping. Why is that, Spyfrog?

Nope

[symes]

Imho, polygraphs should not be used. The simple reason is that some of the more violent and unpleasant people, psychopaths, show blunted responses in psychophysiological tests compared to your 'regular' violent perpetrator. As psychopaths tend to be the ones we should really keep off the streets then a misinformed jury might take polygraph results as definitive evident the perpetrator (psychopath) had not committed the offense and judge accordingly. Also, with a bit of practice and insight, some people are able to control their responses or give misleading results. There's no definitive objective means determining whether someone is telling the truth or not... next to honest evidence the polygraph is pretty useless. It's a nice idea but anyone who has used these psychophysiological tests will know, for every half decent result you also get a fair bit of noise (excluding, of course, the people ho make and sell polygraph tests).

Accuracy as against usefulness

[SEMW]

The most common figure for the accuracy of polygraph tests is 70%. Which sounds reasonable, until you realise that since the situation is binomal -- i.e. the only possible results are "truth" and "lie", so pure chance (e.g. flipping a coin) would give you 50% accuracy; at which point 70% starts to look considerably less impressive.

As I understand it, the most useful (from the police's point of view) way to use of lie detectors is psychological: pretend that they're 100% accurate, get the suspect to say "I didn't do it", bluff and claim that "The Machine Knows You're Lying", and get them to give a confession that way. Of course, such a strategy will fail if the polygraph becomes so widely used that everyone becomes familiar with its limitations.

Re:Accuracy as against usefulness

[Kandenshi]

There are policing agencies out there who already do similar things. Despite it's absense, they may explain that there's incontrevertible evidence that shows that the suspect is guitly, they just want a confession so that the trial goes faster and with less fuss/humiliation for others/etc...

Turns out that one can get a fairly large number of confessions that way, much like you apparently desire. The problem is, it's not all THAT uncommon for the confessions to be lies. Innocent people will lie and confess to horrible, horrible crimes. And a confession given to a jury is a really really good predictor of them finding the defendent guitly. Even if there's little to no other evidence. People tend to believe confessions, which is sort of confusing since they have to reconcile the idea that "this is a dangerous lunatic with no morals and a willingness to kill" against "this is an honest man, who will condemn himself to jail by giving a confession". Still, they manage it.

Feel free to read a bit more about the subject of false confessions here, on some webnotes for a college class here or even here(this last one is perhaps more likely to cherrypick it's evidence, but what it says appears to be true).

False confessions are a rather worrying thing to me, as once a person confesses, the police have a tendency to cease looking for other potential guilty parties. While it's possible some other person will eventually be found guilty and you get released, it's not really something that The System tries for. Makes 'em look bad if they accidentally put someone in jail and gave 'em a whole bunch of publicity as a convicted rapist.

Re:Accuracy as against usefulness

[gvc]

The most common figure for the accuracy of polygraph tests is 70%.

No repeatable study or sequence of studies has demonstrated that the polygraph as deployed for interrogation, screening or any other diagnostic purpose, has 70% accuracy. Or, to be more precise, better than 30% false positive or false negative rates.

The argument is not well served by taking figures like this from the air. If you care to cite a particular study, we can debate its methodology, statistical power, and freedom from confounds such as selective sampling or lack of blinding to the "true" result.

Re:Accuracy as against usefulness

[Kandenshi]

Oh, humans are very readily controlled. Check out Asch's line length study, or Milgram's study on obedience. Those are two pretty famous experiments in psychology, and you can read about them at length in pretty much any introduction to psychology text.
There's plenty, plenty more examples in the history of psychological experimentation, but people can be played pretty readily. That's why psychopaths do so well, it's really not as hard as we'd like to believe to control our thoughts.

Even worse, a tinfoil hat provides little protection against this sort of thing.

As to the false confessions bit, it's my belief(can't cite good evidence for this though), that people expect to get a plea-bargain of sorts. For a judge to go light on the sentencing if they just admit that they did it rather than maintain their denial. If I give you two choices, one where the judge is going to probably lock you away for the next 20 years, and one where you can confess and only get 5-10, which are you going to choose? Keep in mind that we already have multiple eye-witnesses that place you at the scene, and DNA evidence.

Re:Accuracy as against usefulness

[SEMW]

The argument is not well served by taking figures like this from the air. If you care to cite a particular study, we can debate its methodology, statistical power, and freedom from confounds such as selective sampling or lack of blinding to the "true" result. I didn't realise there was much of an argument to be had. The 70% figure was remembered from a chapter on polygraph testing in a book I read about 5 years ago, not any particular study; if you want to read the details of particular studies, there are a few hundred out there, and Google is your friend (for example this 2003 meta-study). They all seem to broadly agree that polygraph testing, whilst significantly better than chance, still isn't very good (e.g. the meta-study linked to concluded that a polygraph test regarding a specific incident can discern the truth at "a level greater than chance, yet short of perfection"; not very specific, but I have no particular desire to pay $3 to read the conclusions in more detail). If you are either so convinced that this is incorrect, or desperately wish to pin down one particular specific figure for accuracy, that you wish to "debate [the] methodology, statistical power, and freedom from confounds such as selective sampling or lack of blinding to the 'true' result" for each study in turn, feel free; I personally don't really see much point. That's what meta-studies are for.

Re:Accuracy as against usefulness

[gvc]

I can't tell you how to spend your next $3.00 but I suggest that you might get that much value -- entertainment if nothing else -- from reading a primary source rather than relying on Wikipedia paraphrasals

The meta-study found only 57 studies that were carried out with sufficient rigor to be considered. Of those, some but not all showed that under laboratory conditions the polygraph showed better than chance results. The result specifically notes that these laboratory findings likely overestimate (i.e. are an upper bound on) the potential accuracy of polygraphs for investigative or screening purposes.

Re:Accuracy as against usefulness

[Alsee]

Maybe someone else can come up with a link, but I recall some time ago reading a hysterical story about some police officers with a fax machine in the interrogation room and telling the dopey criminal that it was a lie detector... no special chair and no blood pressure monitors or anything connected to the machine just a plain old fax sitting on a shelf... and second officer in the adjacent room simply faxing in "lie" and "true" messages... and very quickly having the guy terrified of this "mind-reading machine" and spilling his guts.

-

No, I don't believe they have a place in court

[HouseArrest420]

Lie detectors don't detect lies, contrary to the device's name. They detect physiologal responses to stress, such as elevated blood pressure, pulse, respiratory changes, and sometimes body temperature. All of these things can be "faked". During the initial questioning process that they use to gauge your bodies responses, simply answer a question you know as being true while you clench your ass checks (change in respirations and pulse), or while you try to mimick pain (thumb tac under big toe concealed in shoe). Most lie detector tests ask the same questions in 2 (or more) cases-1 being the control (graphing your responses), and the 2nd time (trying to anticipate your lie). That way when you really do have to lie, your response seems more natural, thus providing false negatives for the test.

Any test that can possibly provide false results should never be used (IMHO) when the resulting information could possibly deny a man his freedom.

Lie detectors are very unreliable

[slashqwerty]

The most common lie detector, the control question test, takes a set of baseline readings where the suspect is expected to tell the truth on some questions and lie on others. It then compares those results to the questions the examiner is most interested in. These tests have been shown to product accurate results about 65% of the time (that's per person tested).

Professional polygraphers will claim their test works 96% of the time. Those claims are bald-faced lies. Regardless of that we can take a look at what happens if the test really did work 96% of the time.

Some employers have been known to hire polygraphers to identify which employee may have been involved in some inside theft (or similar situation). The employer asks the polygrapher to test 50 employees. The odds that the tests will be correct with all 50 employees is 0.96^50=13%. So there is an 87% chance the test will accuse an innocent person...and that assumes the test is correct 96% of the time. What invariably happens is the polygrapher 'discovers' the culprit after the first few tests, packs up his things, and goes home. He identifies the suspect so quickly because the test is only right 65% of the time. Whether the accuracy is 65% of 96% the test will still point to a suspect even if none of the employees did anything wrong.

Re:Lie detectors are very unreliable

[gvc]

Does this link not work for you? I can attempt to paraphrase the paper but since it is only two pages long it would speak for itself much better. I was aware of this article and it does show in one particular laboratory experiment that polygraph results likely differ from chance. The article does not conclude that the results are reliable or transferrable to a diagnostic setting. The authors report on a single experiment in which 100 people are re-interviewed for theft cases that have previously been resolved. 50 are innocent (because somebody else confessed) and 50 are guilty (because they confessed). In this experiment, false positive rates of up to 50% and false negative rates of up to 36% were observed (depending on the interpreter of the charts). These findings are better than chance (p .05). The authors conclude, "Hence, we conclude that the validity and reliability of polygraphic interrogation have yet to be established."

Re:Lie detectors are very unreliable

[SuperCharlie]

A long time ago, I worked in a pawn shop. Somebody got a wild hair and decided everyone had to take polys to remain employed. They were looking for previous thefts, nothing specific, just if we had ever taken anything in the past.

I needed the job badly and I was terrified, being only around 21 or so at the time. I never took anything and I failed miserably because when they asked if youve ever stolen anything I was so nervous about setting it off.. right.. I set it off apparently. I got fired, no recourse.

I came to realize polygraph tests are more about seeing what happens when they kick you than getting at the truth.

What's next handwriting analysis and phrenology?

[GoatRavisher]

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.

DON'T CALL IT A LIE DETECTOR!!!

[Robber Baron]

It doesn't "detect lies"!!! It detects physiological changes ONLY! Determining what those changes actually mean is entirely subjective and open to varied interpretations!

Let the Knee Jerk responses begin...

[DumbSwede]

In this case it is the DEFENSE offering the lie-detector evidence. Most sexual molestation/battery cases come down to he-said she-said. Lots of innocent people have been convicted under these circumstances. While lie-detectors are not perfect I think in this type of situation they are perhaps appropriate. I would not allow them for prosecution (which is what I think a lot of knee-jerk post here have assumed) and only in cases where the evidence comes down to what is being said by two people, which appears to be what the Judge has decided in this case. While lie-detectors are only about 70% accurate, that is better odds than deciding just on the demeanor of two people in court.

I can sympathize that women are outraged by the high number of men that get off scott-free with these type of charges, but that doesn't alter the fact that it really isn't fair to convict someone on nothing more than an accusation by one person without direct supporting evidence (bruises are not direct evidence). Yes direct evidence is hard to come by in these cases, they are usually executed in private without other witnesses, but I for one would rather see 10 guilty men free than send 1 innocent man to jail.

Re:Let the Knee Jerk responses begin...

[Alicat1194]

In this case it is the DEFENSE offering the lie-detector evidence.

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.

not a precedent

[delong]

This evidentiary order is not a "precedent". First, it's a mere evidentiary order. Second, the decisions of state district courts are not precedential. They aren't in any way binding on any other court. Third, this is almost certainly error and will almost certainly be reversed on appeal if it isn't harmless error. The federal rules of evidence and the rules of evidence of every state that I know of bars polygraph evidence as unreliable, and has been so held in state appellate courts. THAT is precedential.

Re:Gray area between truth and lies

[gvc]

I bet at that point if the interrogated person is subjected to a lie detector, they will actually believe that the alternative sequence of events was actually the truth.

This statement presupposes that the lie detector can determine someone's belief. It cannot, at least not any better than Tarot cards or tea leaves.

Stress detectors, not "lie" detectors

[AHumbleOpinion]

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.

Even better story

[nbauman]

George W. Maschke, the founder of Antipolygraph, posted a nice statement of why he founded his web site. https://antipolygraph.org/statements/statement-003 .shtml

The guy sounds like a real straight arrow, super-patriotic American who worked with a Top Secret clearance for U.S. Army Intelligence and with the FBI on the first World Trade Center bombing, and who was particularly valuable because of his fluency in Arabic and Farsi. After doing exempliary work, he applied for a job as FBI special agent, but was rejected and blacklisted elsewhere because a polygraph examiner falsely decided he was lying and rejected him, and the FBI rejected all his appeals.

That's Maschke version, and I'd like to see any response by the FBI or anything to challenge his credibility. I couldn't find anything.

Lie detectors are bullsh*t and don't work!

[Paracelcus]

Back in the 70's I had to pass one for a job I was applying for, I couldn't pass the test questions due to an irregular heartbeat high blood pressure and (at that time) overweight.

If I can illustrate the kinds of test questions that were asked. Do you drink (yes) Bzzt, wrong answer. Are you male (yes) Bzzt, wrong answer. Is it daytime (yes) Bzzt, wrong answer.

Any technology that cannot tell if a fat male drunk is awake in the daytime ain't worth a damn!

No, I didn't get the job.

Re:"Lie" detectors are very useful tools ...

[Jonny_eh]

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.