Quote:The order of events went something like this. Suspect can't be cleared with an alibi. Suspect is questioned and polygraphed. Suspect "fails" polygraph and confesses, tells the police where the body is, and describes the crime.
FBI-R, you described the one redeeming thing about polygraphs: that even in a lie based upon lies (they don't tell lie from truth, and only have a use if a subject believes the proffered lie that they -do-), you can draw the truth out -on occasion-. It's fancy interrogation, nothing more. If it's used as a ruse to get a confession to a murder, from a prime suspect who already has troubles with his story, I have a hard time being upset with it in that case. It's the fact that the box is being used as an
interrogation tactic, with prior suspicions in hand, which gives me less pause about it. Plus, the guy could have refused to take it at any time. If he has a corpse in his basement, he deserves whatever he gets.
However, indiscriminate use of the poly, lining up 20 suspects, testing them, and then reverse-engineering a case against the one found to be the biggest "failure" is flat wrong. Leaking any results of a test is wrong. Indeed, using it beyond the interrogation room, or using it as a threat in some way ("If you don't take this, we'll arrest you"), is improper. It's too likely to finger the wrong guy, and it can lead authorities on a wild goose chase costing $$$.
Note that I am not advocating the poly's use for this reason, or any other. It -might- be useful, but only as a parlor trick to a nobler end, and as a one-time shot. It should be used sparingly, too. In fact, the more I write, the more my reasoning tells me it should be reserved for the most severe or horrible acts. That, or where a giant threat exists to national security...
For example, let's suppose George, founder of this site and righteous guy, got the job he should have gotten those years ago. He's translating a conversation in Farsi that got recorded on a roving cell-phone tap. What do you know, it's plans to hit NYC again, and definitive ones, listing names, locales, and times. The FBI goes out and arrests 5 suspects named in the wiretap...
After George interrogates them (in Farsi, to best gauge their responses), presents them with the copies of the calls, and gets them to talk some, if the FBI wants to try the box on them to scare them, there might be an argument. Not to build a case per se, but perhaps to save lives: you're speaking then of a higher duty. Even then, it is a 10th-string tool, to be sure, and not to gauge truth. That would have been more George's job, as he questioned the men.
I am also not going to bat for its accuracy, which I find to be 50% in most cases. Anything higher than that would require analysis based on a subset of persons who have documented responses to certain questions and types of questions. If you analyzed the prison population of San Quentin, taking 1000 guys whose guilt was not in doubt, and polyed them with the sham reasoning that they would go free if they passed, you'd probably get more than 500 right. Of course, the polyman would have been informed of the subjects' guilt, etc. Not very scientific...
Conclusion 1: it's still junk.
Conclusion 2: if 50 of those San Quentin guys knew how to beat the poly, the machine just got smacked down 50 times. Not very good at all when you're dealing with people whose guilt was never questioned.
Conclusion 3: by FBI rationale, if applied to the suspects George interrogated
as it is to FBI job applicants, and they knew how to beat it, the poly could set them loose... what a crazy world...
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Utility of FBI Polys in Criminal Interrogations (Read 6142 times)
