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Douglas Williams Pleads Guilty To Training Customers To Beat Polygraph
For quite a while, we've been following the case of Douglas Gene Williams, accused of and indicted for teaching people to pass polygraph tests that they might otherwise have been unable to, and for the claims he made in advertising this training -- and specifically for showing his techniques to some undercover Federal agents. Now, reports Ars Technica, Williams has pleaded guilty to five charges of obstruction of justice and mail fraud. From the article: Williams isn't the first person prosecuted for these type of allegations. An Indiana man was accused of offering similar services and was sentenced in 2013 to eight months in prison. The judge presiding over the case said the case blended a "gray area" of First Amendment speech and the unlawful act of instructing people to lie on polygraph tests issued by the federal government.
Williams' site, Polygraph.com, is now defunct.
The other method is to simply be born a psychopath with an absence of conscience. So what point the test when 1% of the human population, 20% of the prison population and 50% of violent crimes are the statistics for psychopaths. So what are they trying to achieve, let 50% of violent crimes go unprosecuted when those psychopaths readily pass the test.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
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The other method is to simply be born a psychopath with an absence of conscience. So what point the test when 1% of the human population, 20% of the prison population and 50% of violent crimes are the statistics for psychopaths.
And, apparently, many (most?) CEOs are psychopaths. Which Professions Have the Most Psychopaths? (there's a list):
CEO is the profession with the most psychopaths.
Also noted here and here and ... oh just Google "ceo" "psychopath"
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Both an older, 3-channel, analog type. As well as, a more advanced computerized one tracking many metrics of the human body. No one defeated the poly.
Suspected psychopaths can be identified through other traits, however if they're sufficiently high-functioning it typically takes a forensic psychologist and a bit of time to resolve. So you have to have both suspicion that someone is a pathological liar and access to a trained person to sort things out. So on the one hand it doesn't make them magically immune to investigation, but it does require different resources than standard police techniques. FBI staff for example do get some training in this area, but you need to have experience interviewing actual psychopaths to prepare you for dealing with them, it's one thing reading about them but quite another experiencing them in person.
(Incidentally, if people think Hannibal Lecter when they hear "psychopath" then think again, although he had some psychopathic traits (grandiose sense of self), he was really just yet another Hollywood-ised mad killer. The character from Wolf of Wall Street is probably the closest Hollywood has come to an accurate portrayal of a psychopath).
Exactly. Except it's being used as a prop by the examiner. Who is the real 'lie detector'. He just bluffs people into fessing up.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I'm not sure what point people who push that statistic are trying to get across. Being a psychopath doesn't inherently make you a bad person, it turns out that it's just a description of how your brain is physically wired.
In many respects, having your brain wired that way is quite useful. For example, any profession that requires a high sense of objectivity would be much better performed by somebody who can turn off emotion like a switch and only turn it on when it suits them, which is a common trait in psychopaths.
These kinds of people make great scientists, judges, journalists, lawyers, etc.
While yes, Bill Clinton was impeached for lying on a civil case -- it was a foregone conclusion BEFORE they impeached him that there was no perjury nor would he be able to be convicted.
Perjury charges are usually very difficult for prosecutors to prove because perjury is a crime of intent. This means that a defendant charged with perjury can only be found guilty if the prosecutor shows beyond a reasonable doubt that he or she intended to make the false statement under oath, or, that the witness told the lie on purpose. As such, criminal attorneys often defend their clients by arguing that the defendant did not intend to lie, or that the party believed the statement to be the truth at the time they made it.
The other thing is that it was not a Material Matter and it was not a criminal case. Having sex or not with Monica Lewinsky had beans to do with whether he forced himself on Jennifer Flowers (her own sister said she was trying to climb that pole for months).
Additionally, the Judge instructed that "sex was copulation between a man and a woman" -- so by the court rules laid out, Clinton's BJ was not considered "sex."
He was impeached, but he did not perjure himself. But he Republicans did, no numerous occasions in order to get him in the hot seat to talk about his penis.
This is just a public service announcement from people sick of us worrying about crap that doesn't matter instead of WAR CRIMES and an asshat like Bush that destroyed our economy, hired mercenaries, profited on war, approved torture, and made a fortune for oil companies and weapons dealers with a direct material benefit back to him -- and YET, we cannot investigate this unless there is a penis involved.
And we have another one of these scumbags from this rotten family in the pipe to go into office again and half the country thinks the Clintons are "more corrupt" even though they were exonerated on all 5 charges that Kenneth Starr spent 5 long years and more money than the 9.11 committee investigating.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
Pffff. . . . Loophole.
All he has to do is change the wording of his website a bit.
From " I will teach you how to lie to the Federal Government " to " I will teach you how to lie LIKE the Federal Government " and all will be golden.
He can even call it a " Politician Boot Camp ".
No one should be coerced to plead guilty against the threat of huge sanctions.
Prosecutions are stacked against the defendant, particularly federal prosecutions. They are alone with their own resources against buildings full of government lawyers drawing a salary, with no incentive to seek justice, just convictions to pad their stats.
By forcing him to plead guilty to a lesser charge (to avoid something silly like 18 consecutive death sentences, or whatever they came up with), the rest of us are duped into believing that he actually did something wrong. Pleas should only be allowed on all charges, or none. Anything in between is institutional coercion, a corruption of justice.
Further, there should be a very, very high bar against charging someone for going about their ordinary business. If his business isn't illegal in general, it shouldn't be illegal when government agents lie to him.
If you pre-pay at a gas station and tell the cashier that you are filling up because you like your getaway car to be in top condition before you rob a bank, is that guy now a felon for not refusing your business? By the logic of this case, if you are an undercover cop he is.
We should be pissed about this. But we aren't. Why not?
See that "Preview" button?