Quote:If any law enforcement agency wants you to take a polygraph test in a criminal investigation case and your lawyer says you should... fire your lawyer and get a new one. No lawyer worth a plug nickel will allow his client to subject themselves to possibly being manipulated into some type of admission.
Burger, very well said. Knowing the truth about the polygraph, only a madman would submit to this "test," innocent or guilty. The police take advantage of the mistaken belief in American popular culture that the "lie-detector" is reliable, and often play the "Why don't you want to submit? Do you have something to hide?" angle. The fact is that the polygraph has never been proven by peer-reviewed scientific research to operate at better than chance levels of accuracy under field conditions. For this reason, polygraph results cannot be used in court in a vast majority of jurisdictions. The device is simply used by the police as a prop to dupe suspects into voluntarily give up the right to remain silent and the right to an attorney.
Unfortunately, honest individuals who desire to help the police and clear their names often submit to the polygraph and are found deceptive. Many of these people might not want to be polygraphed, but decide to submit anyway, because they do not wish to appear uncooperative.
Our advice to those accused of a crime is to simply tell the police that you know the polygraph is unreliable and that you are refuse to submit. If they press you with the "you must be hiding something" approach, simply tell them that you will submit as soon as they direct you toward a peer-reviewed study where the polygraph has been proven to work at better than chance accuracy under field conditions, OR, in the case of CVSA, ANY study showing it to work better than chance
not done by the manufacturer of the device.
A request by the police to be polygraphed brings with it a choice of two evils. Choice #1 is to fully cooperate, and agree to sit down with a trained interrogator for a number of hours,
with no attorney present simply because the police say they have a machine that may produce results that will convince them that you "didn't do it." In actuality, the machine frequently falsely accuses a substantial percentage of those who tell the truth, the operator can manipulate the results to cause anyone to “fail,” and even if one passes, the results are not guaranteed to remove suspicion. Choice #2 is to refuse to submit, ignore the "what do you have to hide" fallacy, and only allow yourself to be questioned with a lawyer present. Personally, if put into this situation, I would choose the latter, running the risk of appearing uncooperative rather than giving up my rights to remain silent and have an attorney present in exchange for the chance that an unreliable and easily manipulated “technology” *might* help me clear my name.