You should refuse the polygraph. If your lawyer has even the slightest understanding of what polygraphy is all about, he will also advise you to refuse to submit to such pseudoscientific nonsense. Polygraph "testing" has no scientific basis. Worse still, it has an inherent bias against the truthful. And because you have already been accused of starting the fire and interrogated at length about it, you are at heightened risk of becoming a false positive.

You'll find more on the scientific status of polygraphy and a thorough exposition of the trickery on which it depends in The Lie Behind the Lie Detector. When explaining to the fire marshall your reasons for refusing the polygraph, feel free to refer him to the information you've found here.

Refuse the polygraph. Make hard evidense the determining factor. Their is no guilt proven for refusing. Fire Departments, mostly, do a pretty good job investigating a fire. They either have evidense to implicate you or they don't. Do not be bullied into taking a poly. One CANNOT be required by law to take it. Your lawyer should put a stop to this. The polygraph is only an interrogation process without a lawyer.

Tell the Fire Marshall that you are not willing to put your future on the line based on a guess and to read this website. Study it yourself very long and hard.

Don't worry about looking guilty: you already do, or the fire marshall wouldn't be pressuring you into submitting to a polygraph interrogation.

I think you would be wise not to speak with investigators again without a lawyer present. In explaining your refusal of the polygraph, apart from stating that you are acting on your lawyer's advice (correct?), you might also provide the fire marshall with a printout of William G. Iacono's article, "Forensic 'Lie Detection': Procedures Without Scientific Basis":

http://antipolygraph.org/articles/article-018.shtml

A few yeasr ago I gave a polygrpah exam to a person accused of arson at his atorney's rquest.  She passed the exam and was not charged despite pressure from different arson investigators. The insurance investigator determined it was accidental and the fire marshal insisted it was arson. Listen to what your attorney says

Here is my story. Welcome to my hollywood life

About 3 weeks ago, my wife's boss contracted me out to remove some old computers from their office, salvage and sell what I could and then destroy the rest.

2 days later, my wife's boss called her into her office and proceeded to threaten her saying "If I find out I cant trust you, I will make your and your husband's life a living hell". This spurred my curiousity as to why she would do that. My wife had only been working there for about 2 weeks at the time. So I decided to take a closer look at the computers she gave me. I found falsified documents that were sent to the IRS, Dept of Labor and the Texas State Comptrollers office. After a couple of days of sitting on them and many conversations with close friends and my pastor I decided to turn them over to the FBI. So that Friday morning I called up the FBI and told them what I found. He had me fax him the documents and he then turned it over to the Treasury Department. The USTD agent called me back in about an hour and I told him the same story and faxed him the same documents.

Monday morning, my wife and I went to work as normal. She dropped me off and then dropped my daughter off and went to work. We wanted to act as if we knew nothing to keep eyes off of us. My wife came and picked me up for lunch around 11:30am. We went by the house, let our dogs out to use the bathroom and then left. We were there for a total of 5 minutes. I dropped my wife off at work, stopped by the store to get a soda and went back to work. I was back at work by 12:15pm.

Around 1:30 I sent an email to our landlords to let them know I would be overnighting a check for rent since the one we sent had not gotten to them in Arizona yet. I then emailed my pastor to thank him for his time and support through all of this. About 1:50 I receive a call from my mother telling me our house is on fire.

I rush home and see about 8 engines there and flames shooting through my roof. The first thing I think of is our puppies. The fire marshall comes up to me and tells me that they didnt make it but they didnt burn. I immediately tell the marshal to contact the FBI office.

I called my wife on the way to the house and she had gotten a ride to the house. She shows up and is hysterical about losing our dogs and our belongings.

About 4 hours later, the marshal turns the house back over to us, even though he said the fire looked suspicious. He even went as far as to show us how he thought the fire started. He thought that it looked like someone had sprayed something around the door or between the door and the frame, lit it and walked off. I say "Like WD40?" and he says "Exactly"

Move to yesterday. I called the marshal to ask if there is any update as it had been about a week since the fire. He asks that I come in to discuss it with him. I go to his office and he proceeds to interrogate me for an hour and a half saying he thinks we did it and is completely dismissing these people that we turned in. We found out right after we turned the stuff over to the FBI that these people have ties to South American drug and organized crime and we have also found out since that he has harrassed and vandalized many other people in this town. (This is a pretty small town I live in).

Well here is the evidence they are trying to put against us and my evidence to the contrary.

1. We had just gotten the renter's insurance policy 2 weeks prior to the fire.
--We were looking to buy this home from the owners and had contacted our Allstate agent to find out about Homeowners insurance. A couple days later, the agent called us back and told us that we could save 15% on our car insurance if we got a renters policy. We did the math and we would save money so we went ahead and did this. The agent will testify that he called us and not the other way around.

2. We were home at 11:30 that day.
--we go home EVERYDAY to let our dogs out

3. My wife has a prior incident on her record of animaly cruelty
--She was locked out of her apartment by her landlords and was either faced with breaking and entering or letting the dog die. She even went as far as to call the police and they did not help her since the apartment was no longer hers. We had also just purchased one of our puppies about 2 weeks prior to the fire and our older dog we had spent over $600 in vet bills cause he got sick because of a bad breeder. My wife had even been on the local news as an activist against animal cruelty about a year before. We have all the vet bills and pictures of us and the puppies.

4. We were behind on rent.
--We are talking $1200 here. And the reason we were behind was because we had mailed the check and it was lost in the mail. Hence the reason I sent the email that day to let them know I was overnighting the check to them. We have the carbon copies of the orignal checks with the original dates

5. We were trying to get out of the house
--this is the one that should prove me innocent completely. We have tons of documentation to support that we were in the process of securing a loan to get that house from a mortgage company. Emails, documents, credit repair that we had been doing, etc. We have it all.

6. We were trying to make money off this
--our value of everything in the house was well over the $30,000 policy we had bought. Plus, we had just purchased my daughter a new bed, new bedding for her bed and new bedding for our bed that totaled over $1000 one week before the fire.

7. The fact that I said "Like WD40"
--the marshal calls this recognition. He thinks because I was using common since (what other flammable spray could you spray between a door and the frame????)

I know I have nothing to worry about. We have a witness that said she saw us at the house around the time we said we were there and did not see anything suspicious. We have another witness that had driven by the house at 1:20pm and said she saw nothing (no smoke, fire, NOTHING). But the fact that they seem to be putting it on me or my wife has really got me bothered. I dont trust the local officials in this town and the FBI seems to think I am just being paranoid. No one seems to take us seriously and thinks we had something to gain from this. We lost EVERYTHING. Our dogs, our belongings, all of my daughter's toys!!! Who buys $1000 worth of stuff for a house, paints the kitchen a month before, cleans the carpets 2 weeks before and then sets fire to a house they are trying to buy???

I apologize for this being so long but there is even more to it. I know for a fact that there is a leak in the fire marshal's office. One of the Battalion Cheif's spouse works for my wife's boss and somehow they found out about us turning the documents over and fired my wife on the spot and they also know that we are the ones being pointed at for starting the fire. I dont know who to trust in this town and dont know what more I can do to prove my innocence. The best thing I have going for me are character witnesses, proof we were at work 2 hours before the fire station was called, and proof we were trying to buy the house. Not to mention that the fire marshal never once taped the house off with crime scene tape, only took one sample of evidence and then turned the house over to us 4 hours later. Not to mention that probably 30 people have been in and out of that house over the last week and the restoration crew has already removed almost everything from the house and trashed it.

How??? I understand that there may be some things that looks suspicious, but I have evidence and documentation to send right back to rebut any of it. Why would we set fire to a place we are 1) trying to buy 2) buying things for 3) puppy we had just paid $350 for only 3 weeks prior to this happening?

What more can I do to prove my innocence other than producing some miracle video tape that shows someone else setting the fire?

And does none of the other things with her boss, their DOCUMENTED ties to organized crime and other people willing to come forward that they have done similar things to not mean squat? We have already lost everything we own and now they are threatening taking away our freedom as well! If I were to be wrongly convicted of this, I may not see my daughter for 10-20 years!!! People would testify that THAT thought alone would mean I could never have done something like this. I love my daughter more than anything in this world!

Twoblock wrote on Mar 10^th, 2006 at 4:44am:

I don't have sufficient knowledge of the case to say who may have started the fire, and I'm not trying to imply anything now.

However, the idea that a corrupt official would store damning evidence on their computer, then hire someone to cart away that computer, then realize the information shouldn't get out and decide the best course of action would be to burn that person's house down AFTER they've already talked to the FBI sounds like fiction more than fact.  If someone came into my department with that story I would be taking a long look at them.

That doesn't mean I think he set the fire.  But to me it certainly explains why the police/fire marshal are showing an interest in him.  Plus, there are a few other indicators in his written statement that point strongly toward the fact that he is not being truthful.  It probably wouldn't be responsible of me to point them out during an investigation like that, but I believe every other LEO on this board has seen them as well.

As I advised him in response to his PM, anyone facing criminal prosecution, whether they are guilty or innocent, would be well advised to hire competent legal counsel.