Chris Durant of the Eureka, California Times-Standard reports in “Rape sentencing awaiting polygraph results”:
EUREKA — The four men who are accused of holding a woman in their Whitethorn home in March and repeatedly raping her entered guilty pleas to some charges Monday, but their exact sentences won’t be determined until after each are polygraphed.
Nate Robin Garza, 21, Levi Cole Garza, 21, Deshawn Lee Moore, 32, and Gregory Donald Scheider, 31, were arrested within a week of the crime being reported.
[Humboldt County] Deputy District Attorney Jeff Schwartz said the concerns of the victim was a “big factor” in his decision to offer the plea agreements.
“There’s was a lot of consultation with the rape victim,” Schwartz said.
The victim testified at the preliminary hearing, but didn’t want to go through recounting the crimes in public again, Schwartz said.
Depending on the results of the yet-to-be-scheduled lie detector tests and a judge’s decision, the sentences for Nate Garza, Moore and Scheider can be up to five years in prison.
If the results of the tests are not in the three men’s favor they will be sentenced on a rape in concert charge and be sentenced to five years. They will also have a strike on their record and have to register as sex offenders wherever they live for the rest of their lives.
If the results of the tests are in their favor, the men will be sentenced on a false imprisonment charge and a judge can sentence them up to three years in prison, Schwartz said.
Levi Garza can be sentenced on kidnapping, false imprisonment and a marijuana trafficking charge if the test is favorable for him. A judge will then determine his sentence, ranging from three to eight years.
If the test is not favorable for him, he will be sentenced to five years and eight months on a rape charge, have a strike on his record and have to register as a sex offender.
The four were held to answer to various charges after a preliminary hearing in April.
Levi Garza was held to answer to a kidnapping charge, rape and false imprisonment. His brother, Nate Garza, was held to answer to a kidnapping charge, attempted oral copulation, rape and sodomy.
Moore was held to answer to rape, attempted oral copulation and sodomy.
Scheider was held to answer to rape, sodomy and possession of a controlled substance.
The polygraph is being conducted by District Attorney Investigator Jim Dawson.
“Our office is very confident in Jim Dawson to do this,” Schwartz said. “Everyone will accept his results.”
Dawson is out of town until July 24, and the next hearing is scheduled for July 26. Schwartz said he doesn’t think the results of the tests will be ready by the court date but there is a possibility.
In 1998 the United States Supreme Court ruled that the decision to allow polygraphs as evidence is up to the individual judge.
A polygraph, or lie detector, measures the body’s involuntary responses to questions. Generally, the polygraph measures reactions from the respiratory, cardiovascular and sweat gland systems.
It is a dereliction of duty to rely on polygraph results to make sentencing determinations. Polygraphy has no scientific basis, is inherently biased against the truthful, and easily manipulated through the use of simple countermeasures that polygraphers have no demonstrated ability to detect.
ACTS MAY BE SCIENTIFICALLY DETECTABLE, BUT INTENTIONS ARE NOT
Even supporters of the (CQT) polygraph like David Raskin and the polygraphic texts themselves admit that only guilty acts, and not intentions, can be detected. So variants of the Guilty Knowledge Test (GKT) or Concealed INformation Test (CIT) which are scientific ways of detecting guilt (for distinction between CQT and GKT see first two sections of http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/~furedy/polygraph.htm), are nevertheless only appropriate for detecting an act (e.g., did X have intercourse withi Y) and not an intention (e.g., did X think that the intercourse was voluntary).
Accordingly, even if the CQT were scientifically bassed (which it’s not), it is completely inappriate to use it to determine the length of a sentence after someone has already been found to be guilty, because that determination involves intentions and not actsj.
However, in actual practice, like snake oil, the CQT polygraph is attributed the magical lpower of detecting not onlyhy acts, but also intentions. And of course with crimes that have no source of independent evidence (the “she said he said variety), the polygraph, in the superstition-ridden North American culture, has expanded its range of accepted application, jsut as snake oil was considered to be good for all ills.
But whereas snake oil was intended by its practitioners to be a cure for disease, the CQT polygraph examiner is not really interested in detecting deception (or guilt) at all, but is rather motivated to elicit a confession of guilt, whether that confession is true or false. So the polygraph serves simply as a prop for interrogation, and not for detecting deception or guilt (http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/~furedy/Papers/ld/lie_prop.htm).
Finally, the confusion between the CQT’s use for detecting guilty acts and guilty intentions has been around for a while. My first encounter (1982) with the act use of the polygraph. As detailed in http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/~furedy/Papers/ld/Cconfess.doc (see R. v. Lottman), the CQT polygrapher had convinced the police that a driver of a get-away car was guilty of murder on the grounds that the robber killed a jstore owner (an act) and that the polygraph “showed” that the driver was an accomplice in the murder rather than just the robber (an intention). Note how a GKT could only be employed to investigate wheether the robber had committed the murder, but not whether the driver intended this murder, and not just the robbery, to occur.
PLEASE ADD THE FOLLOWING AS I SENT THE PREVIOUS MESSAGE BY MISTAKE:
So while the distinction between acts and intentions may seem rather academic and esoteric, the distinction has important practical implications for a genuinely scientific and rational evaluation of the psychophysiological detection of guilt.
All the best, John
The whole town knew it was B.S. girl was slut ect… she failed the lie detector test… Levi Garza is still in prison for other charges…