Ohio Court Admits Lie Detector Tests As Evidence

An anonymous reader writes "Last month, an Ohio court set a new precedent by allowing polygraph test results to be entered as evidence in a criminal trial. Do lie detectors really belong in the court room? AntiPolygraph.org critiques the polygraph evidence from the this precedential case (Ohio v. Sharma)."

Ohio, eh?

[ScrewMaster (602015)]

I was thinking about moving to a different State, but hadn't figured out which one. Now I'm down to 49 possibilities.

Re:Ohio, eh?

[PsychoSlashDot (207849)]

I was thinking about moving to a different State, but hadn't figured out which one. Now I'm down to 49 possibilities.

Given your subject line of "Ohio, eh?" and you're moving to a different state, and that you're down to 49 possibilities, I can only conclude you're one of those that view Canada as the 51st state. Come on up, we've got plenty of room, beer, and freshly-clubbed baby seals to go around. You do like hockey, eh?

Lie Dectectors will persist...

[bossesjoe (675859)]

...as long as people are still searching for some magical way to get the truth out of somebody. Won't happen short of the next fifty years of neurological research.

Re:Lie Dectectors will persist...

[Maxo-Texas (864189)]

Give me a two by four and I can have you begging me to believe you are Osama Bin Ladin in under 60 minutes!

Re:Lie Dectectors will persist...

[WhatAmIDoingHere (742870)]

There are FOUR lights.

Re:Gray area between truth and lies

[gvc (167165)]

I bet at that point if the interrogated person is subjected to a lie detector, they will actually believe that the alternative sequence of events was actually the truth.

This statement presupposes that the lie detector can determine someone's belief. It cannot, at least not any better than Tarot cards or tea leaves.

Nice, unbiased source.

[Elemenope (905108)]

antipolygraph.com? Well, anyway, this is quite unfortunate, especially if polygraphs are as unreliable as they have always been...and I haven't seen or heard anything to suggest that they aren't.

Re:Nice, unbiased source.

[hedwards (940851)]

I remember seeing a clip of Groucho being subjected to a polygraph from the 50s, and while funny, it didn't inspire any sort of confidence in the technology.

I agree, that considering how many minor things are consider to taint the jury, a polygraph is probably just about the worst of them. The reliability just isn't there, and even when they are accurate, they don't really give any indication of what the lie actually is.

Worse, they tend to work worse when the subject is already under stress. Overall, the technology just isn't there, and won't ever get there. If anything is more reliable, it'll be of a different form, probably something that scans the brain directly. Even that though is going to be tough.

Weight vs admissibility

[deblau (68023)]

Getting evidence admitted is one thing, but getting a jury to believe it or give it any weight or credibility is something else entirely.

Re:Weight vs admissibility

[Elemenope (905108)]

That's fantastic! That means only people who can't afford better lawyers than the schmucks on TV will be imprisoned, and who cares about them, anyway?

But, to lose the sarcasm for a moment, most defendant protections in criminal law were developed so as to defend even the indigent, since they are the most vulnerable to unfairness seeing as how their lawyers either suck or are overworked (or both). If a method of obtaining evidence is bad enough that a decently trained lawyer can demonstrate its utter ridiculousness, it does not belong in a courtroom in the first place. The competence of the defendant's lawyer should not be depended upon as the single fail-safe employed to determine whether a person should be deprived of their freedom.

Re:

[Foobar of Borg (690622)]

This might just be a Pennsylvania thing then. I know I always thought it was retarded, but it's how they do things here. I guess I just assumed it was like that everywhere.

Well, in Pennsylvania (except perhaps Philadelphia and Pittsburgh), a juror cannot even drive a car to the courthouse since they don't want the judge's horse disturbed and upset by those loud, new-fangled "automobiles".

Re:Weight vs admissibility

[All_One_Mind (945389)]

I failed a polygraph when I was telling the truth. I was looking at 14 years in prison, so the pressure was intense and I was nervous as fuck. The end result: The polygraph said I was lying about not shooting some guy I had never met in the face.

I can't even imagine what would've happened if that would've been considered "evidence" admissible in court. I'd probably be in prison right now.

No

[spyfrog (552673)]

"Do lie detectors really belong in the court room?"

No. Next question please.

Nope

[symes (835608)]

Imho, polygraphs should not be used. The simple reason is that some of the more violent and unpleasant people, psychopaths [wikipedia.org], show blunted responses in psychophysiological tests compared to your 'regular' violent perpetrator. As psychopaths tend to be the ones we should really keep off the streets then a misinformed jury might take polygraph results as definitive evident the perpetrator (psychopath) had not committed the offense and judge accordingly. Also, with a bit of practice and insight, some people are able to control their responses or give misleading results. There's no definitive objective means determining whether someone is telling the truth or not... next to honest evidence the polygraph is pretty useless. It's a nice idea but anyone who has used these psychophysiological tests will know, for every half decent result you also get a fair bit of noise (excluding, of course, the people ho make and sell polygraph tests).

Accuracy as against usefulness

[SEMW (967629)]

The most common figure for the accuracy of polygraph tests is 70%. Which sounds reasonable, until you realise that since the situation is binomal -- i.e. the only possible results are "truth" and "lie", so pure chance (e.g. flipping a coin) would give you 50% accuracy; at which point 70% starts to look considerably less impressive.

As I understand it, the most useful (from the police's point of view) way to use of lie detectors is psychological: pretend that they're 100% accurate, get the suspect to say "I didn't do it", bluff and claim that "The Machine Knows You're Lying", and get them to give a confession that way. Of course, such a strategy will fail if the polygraph becomes so widely used that everyone becomes familiar with its limitations.

Re:Accuracy as against usefulness

[Kandenshi (832555)]

There are policing agencies out there who already do similar things. Despite it's absense, they may explain that there's incontrevertible evidence that shows that the suspect is guitly, they just want a confession so that the trial goes faster and with less fuss/humiliation for others/etc...

Turns out that one can get a fairly large number of confessions that way, much like you apparently desire. The problem is, it's not all THAT uncommon for the confessions to be lies. Innocent people will lie and confess to horrible, horrible crimes. And a confession given to a jury is a really really good predictor of them finding the defendent guitly. Even if there's little to no other evidence. People tend to believe confessions, which is sort of confusing since they have to reconcile the idea that "this is a dangerous lunatic with no morals and a willingness to kill" against "this is an honest man, who will condemn himself to jail by giving a confession". Still, they manage it.

Feel free to read a bit more about the subject of false confessions here [psychologytoday.com], on some webnotes for a college class here [72.14.205.104] or even here [innocenceproject.org](this last one is perhaps more likely to cherrypick it's evidence, but what it says appears to be true).

False confessions are a rather worrying thing to me, as once a person confesses, the police have a tendency to cease looking for other potential guilty parties. While it's possible some other person will eventually be found guilty and you get released, it's not really something that The System tries for. Makes 'em look bad if they accidentally put someone in jail and gave 'em a whole bunch of publicity as a convicted rapist.

Re:Accuracy as against usefulness

[Alsee (515537)]

Maybe someone else can come up with a link, but I recall some time ago reading a hysterical story about some police officers with a fax machine in the interrogation room and telling the dopey criminal that it was a lie detector... no special chair and no blood pressure monitors or anything connected to the machine just a plain old fax sitting on a shelf... and second officer in the adjacent room simply faxing in "lie" and "true" messages... and very quickly having the guy terrified of this "mind-reading machine" and spilling his guts.

-

Re:Accuracy as against usefulness

[Kandenshi (832555)]

Oh, humans are very readily controlled. Check out Asch's line length study [wikipedia.org], or Milgram's study on obedience [wikipedia.org]. Those are two pretty famous experiments in psychology, and you can read about them at length in pretty much any introduction to psychology text.
There's plenty, plenty more examples in the history of psychological experimentation, but people can be played pretty readily. That's why psychopaths do so well, it's really not as hard as we'd like to believe to control our thoughts.

Even worse, a tinfoil hat provides little protection against this sort of thing.

As to the false confessions bit, it's my belief(can't cite good evidence for this though), that people expect to get a plea-bargain of sorts. For a judge to go light on the sentencing if they just admit that they did it rather than maintain their denial. If I give you two choices, one where the judge is going to probably lock you away for the next 20 years, and one where you can confess and only get 5-10, which are you going to choose? Keep in mind that we already have multiple eye-witnesses that place you at the scene, and DNA evidence.

Re:Accuracy as against usefulness

[gvc (167165)]

The most common figure for the accuracy of polygraph tests is 70%.

No repeatable study or sequence of studies has demonstrated that the polygraph as deployed for interrogation, screening or any other diagnostic purpose, has 70% accuracy. Or, to be more precise, better than 30% false positive or false negative rates.

The argument is not well served by taking figures like this from the air. If you care to cite a particular study, we can debate its methodology, statistical power, and freedom from confounds such as selective sampling or lack of blinding to the "true" result.

Lie detectors are very unreliable

[slashqwerty (1099091)]

The most common lie detector, the control question test, takes a set of baseline readings where the suspect is expected to tell the truth on some questions and lie on others. It then compares those results to the questions the examiner is most interested in. These tests have been shown to product accurate results about 65% of the time (that's per person tested).

Professional polygraphers will claim their test works 96% of the time. Those claims are bald-faced lies. Regardless of that we can take a look at what happens if the test really did work 96% of the time.

Some employers have been known to hire polygraphers to identify which employee may have been involved in some inside theft (or similar situation). The employer asks the polygrapher to test 50 employees. The odds that the tests will be correct with all 50 employees is 0.96^50=13%. So there is an 87% chance the test will accuse an innocent person...and that assumes the test is correct 96% of the time. What invariably happens is the polygrapher 'discovers' the culprit after the first few tests, packs up his things, and goes home. He identifies the suspect so quickly because the test is only right 65% of the time. Whether the accuracy is 65% of 96% the test will still point to a suspect even if none of the employees did anything wrong.

What's next handwriting analysis and phrenology?

[GoatRavisher (779902)]

I once interviewed for a job and was told that I would be required to handwrite a statement so it could be analyzed by their "handwriting expert." I promptly got up and left. They looked shocked. Apparently they initially tried polygraphing applicants, but found it to be too expensive. Years later I bumped into the HR person at another job and asked her about the success of the vetting process. She said it didn't work and if anything made things worse.

DON'T CALL IT A LIE DETECTOR!!!

[Robber Baron (112304)]

It doesn't "detect lies"!!! It detects physiological changes ONLY! Determining what those changes actually mean is entirely subjective and open to varied interpretations!

Let the Knee Jerk responses begin...

[DumbSwede (521261)]

In this case it is the DEFENSE offering the lie-detector evidence. Most sexual molestation/battery cases come down to he-said she-said. Lots of innocent people have been convicted under these circumstances. While lie-detectors are not perfect I think in this type of situation they are perhaps appropriate. I would not allow them for prosecution (which is what I think a lot of knee-jerk post here have assumed) and only in cases where the evidence comes down to what is being said by two people, which appears to be what the Judge has decided in this case. While lie-detectors are only about 70% accurate, that is better odds than deciding just on the demeanor of two people in court.

I can sympathize that women are outraged by the high number of men that get off scott-free with these type of charges, but that doesn't alter the fact that it really isn't fair to convict someone on nothing more than an accusation by one person without direct supporting evidence (bruises are not direct evidence). Yes direct evidence is hard to come by in these cases, they are usually executed in private without other witnesses, but I for one would rather see 10 guilty men free than send 1 innocent man to jail.

Re:Let the Knee Jerk responses begin...

[Alicat1194 (970019)]

In this case it is the DEFENSE offering the lie-detector evidence.

It doesn't matter if the side offering the evidence is the defense or the prosecution - once the evidence is accepted it sets a (potentially dangerous) precedent.

not a precedent

[delong (125205)]

This evidentiary order is not a "precedent". First, it's a mere evidentiary order. Second, the decisions of state district courts are not precedential. They aren't in any way binding on any other court. Third, this is almost certainly error and will almost certainly be reversed on appeal if it isn't harmless error. The federal rules of evidence and the rules of evidence of every state that I know of bars polygraph evidence as unreliable, and has been so held in state appellate courts. THAT is precedential.