Quote:
Originally Posted by iLikeCaliDonks
I would have to disagree. You are leveling yourself if you think you can pass a lie detector test. I think I could but the reports say otherwise.
When I represented criminal defendants who were actually innocent (very rare, btw) they would usually offer to take a polygraph.
I would tell them, "look, you don't want to take a polygraph on whether you shot Abe Lincoln, ok? Those things are a joke."
There are two issues:
1. The test is inherently unreliable. They work on the assumption, oversimplifying, that a truthful person will be completely calm and that a dishonest person will involuntarily show specific signs of stress.
But being in a situation where your continued freedom is at issue is inherently stressful, and if when they finally ask you " did you shoot so and so?" after 15 minutes of calming you down with irrelevant questions, most normal people's stress levels will spike because "omg, this is it!"
2. If you're a criminal defendant, the police/prosecutors won't care that you pass a polygraph unless it was administered by their guy. And their guy is ALWAYS either a cop or an ex-cop, who has a cop's built-in bias that if you're charged, you're guilty.
In fact, lie detector tests are notoriously easy to beat. The Lie detector literature I have read says the CIA trains it's people to beat the test with simple tricks like biting their tongue during the irrelevant baseline questioning (pain = stress) and holding their breath.
All of this is why they can't be used in court. Because they are a joke.