First to Skeptic:

I have been in the law enforcement field since 1978, and in that time have had a tremendous amount of exposure to interviews, interrogations, and polygraph.  Why assume that I am a polygraph examiner?  Maybe I simply take offense to amatures making ignorant comments and assumptions regarding how a confession is obtained.  If Beech Trees is capable of presenting his credentials then let him do so.  Until then he should base his comments on fact not speculation and or assumptions.

Now to Beech Trees:

Simply answer the question if you can.  What is your first hand experience with polygraph and interviews/interrogations? Are you basing your comments about illegally obtained confessions on actual experience or are you simply speculating?  What exposure have you actually had with the utilization of the polygraph technique?  Again, you speak with such authority when you are advising people on matters that may impact their lives, I think it is a fair question as to what experience or exposure you have in either the field of law or law enforcement.

To answer your question, you are getting to me only in that you seem so willing and eager to attack a whole profession (law enforcement) but you base these attacks on what?  A bad experience with a particular investigative technique that you happened to be subjected to?  On what do you base your comments about illegally obtained confessions?  Please do not split hairs as to your exact terminology.  You used the word coerced.  A coerced confession is an illegally obtained confession.  You made the comment to PolyCop that he coerced a confession from someone.  Again, what do you base this on?

Please provide the data, or as Skeptic says "the peer reviewed scientific findings" regarding coerced confessions.

Batman