Lie Detector Leads to Execution of Innocent Man in Taiwan

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Polygraph victim Chiang Kuo-ching

Dennis Engbarth reports for Inter Press Service on the case of Chiang Kuo-ching, a Taiwanese airman who was executed in 1997 for the rape and murder of a five-year-old girl. Military investigators tortured a confession out of Chiang after he failed to pass a lie detector “test.” Since then, DNA evidence and a palm-print have incriminated a different person.

The following is an excerpt from Engbarth’s report for IPS:

After a three-month retrial, Ministry of National Defence northern district military court judge Liu Yu-wei announced on Sep. 13 that a panel of three military judges had found that Chiang Kuo-ching, who was 23 at the time of his execution was “not guilty” of the rape and murder of a five-year-old girl at an Air Force headquarters complex in Taipei city in September 1996.

The court stated that Chiang had been “locked in” as the prime suspect after failing to pass a lie detector test administered by Investigation Bureau agents, and acknowledged that Air Force counter-intelligence agents acting under the orders of then Air Force Commander and later defence minister Chen Chao-min had “used improper methods to obtain a confession from the defendant and used the confession to bolster weak forensic and physical evidence.”

UPDATE: Earlier this year, the Taipei Times reported that:

Chiang and three other suspects were arrested, but Chiang was the only one who did not pass a lie detector test.

The military subsequently sent in counterintelligence officers, who subjected him to various forms of torture and extracted a confession from the young airman.

Troy Davis and the Polygraph

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Troy Davis

Lawyers for Troy Davis, who faces execution by lethal injection at 19:00 hours Eastern time today for the 1991 slaying of an off-duty Savannah police officer, are seeking a polygraph test in a bid to persuade the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles to stay the execution.

The Davis case has been the subject of much controversy, as seven of nine non-police witnesses upon whose testimony his conviction hinged have recanted their testimony, with some of the recanting witnesses alleging that police coerced their testimony. No physical evidence connects Davis to the murder, and it seems that Georgia is about to execute a man concerning whose guilt considerable reasonable doubt exists, and who indeed may be innocent.

As AntiPolygraph.org has long pointed out, polygraph “testing” has no scientific basis, and polygraph results are evidence of nothing. Yet it is understandable that with appeals exhausted, Davis’s legal team would grasp at this straw.

If Davis is granted permission to submit to a polygraph test, several points are worth bearing in mind:

  1. Polygraphy has an inherent bias against truthful persons, because the more candidly one answers the so-called “control” questions, and as a consequence, feels less anxiety when answering them, the more likely one is to wrongly fail. Moreover, Davis’s guilt or innocence aside, one can reasonably expect him to be highly sensitized to the relevant questions (the ones about the murder), if only because his life depends on them. If Davis fails the polygraph, it is not evidence of guilt.
  2. Despite polygraphy’s bias against the innocent, liars can easily pass using simple countermeasures that polygraph operators have no demonstrated ability to detect. If Davis passes the polygraph, it is not evidence of innocence.
  3. If the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles is so uncertain of Davis’s guilt that it would be willing to consider polygraph results, then regardless of the outcome, the Board has enough doubt that it should commute Davis’s death sentence.

UPDATE: Georgia prison officials have rejected Davis’s request to submit to a polygraph examination.

Philadelphia P.D.’s Pre-Employment Polygraph Failure Rate Pegged at 63%

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Greg Thomas

Philadelphia PD Applicant Greg Thomas (Inquirer Photograph)

In his latest article, Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Daniel Rubin documents the plight of Greg Thomas, an investigator for the city court system who recently failed a Philadelphia Police Department pre-employment polygraph despite, he insists, having told the truth.

Rubin notes that since reinstating polygraph screening this year (it had been discontinued in 2002), the Philadelphia P.D. has had a pre-employment polygraph failure rate of 63%. Those who do not pass are rejected. There is no appeal process. Given polygraphy’s lack of scientific underpinnings, there can be no doubt but that many of those 63% are being falsely accused. And given the polygraph’s vulnerability to easily-learned countermeasures, one can have little confidence that the polygraph is screening out those who have the most to hide.

AntiPolygraph.org’s George Maschke is among those contacted for this article.

Kyle Hill on Polygraphy

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Kyle Hill

Skeptic Kyle Hill, a graduate student at Marquette University who maintains the blog Science-Based Life, takes a look at the evidence for polygraphy in “The Polygraph Test: Can Science Tell if You Are Lying?” He compares the claims made by polygraph advocates such as the American Polygraph Association with the findings of the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the National Research Council.

Kyle’s conclusion: “The foundations for polygraphy are flawed, the evidence is lacking, and the science disagrees. Therefore: science can not yet tell, with any significant accuracy, if you are lying.”

Read the rest of the article here.

New Law Enforcement Polygraph Handbook

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Polygraph Law Enforcement AccreditationAs the American Polygraph Association holds its annual seminar in Austin, Texas this week, one of the topics on the agenda is a program run by a consortium of federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies called “Polygraph Law Enforcement Accreditation” (PLEA). Participating agencies include the Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), the Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS), the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), and the Houston Police Department.

The PLEA consortium, whose motto is “Semper Veritas” (truth always), has promulgated a 65-page “Polygraph Guide for Standards and Practices” that sets forth procedures and protocols to be used by participating agencies. AntiPolygraph.org has received a copy of this guide, each page of which is marked “Law Enforcement Sensitive Information,” and has made it available for download here (1.9 MB PDF). Chapter 10 will be of special interest to applicants for employment with agencies participating in the PLEA consortium.

 

Polygraphing Players Is Not Cricket

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Steve Waugh

Polygraph advocate Steve Waugh

Guardian reporter David Hopps reports in a story published by the Sydney Morning Herald that former Australia cricket team captain Steve Waugh is advocating the use of lie detectors in an attempt to root out corruption in the scandal-plagued sport. Excerpt:

ANDREW Strauss and Mahendra Singh Dhoni will be encouraged to help stamp out corruption in cricket by taking lie-detector tests as the MCC uses the occasion of the 2000th Test match to step up its campaign to clean up the game.

The controversial proposal is the brainchild of former Australia captain Steve Waugh, who wants leading captains such as Strauss and Dhoni to act as ambassadors and role models by voluntarily putting their reputations on the line.

But the proposal is not supported by the Australian Cricketers’ Association, because lie-detector tests are not admissible in court.

”I applaud Steve Waugh for looking at creative and proactive ways to deal with corruption, but we wouldn’t support the use of polygraphs at this point in time,” ACA chief executive Paul Marsh said. ”Results can be affected if you’re nervous or under stress or whatever, so there may be reasons, other than not telling the truth, that you fail it and we couldn’t open players up to that.”

Waugh is at Lord’s as chairman of an MCC world cricket committee working party that was charged last year with investigating ways corruption might be eradicated. He made his chief proposal only metres away from where Strauss and Dhoni supervised practice ahead of a Test series that will decide whether England or India finish the summer as the No 1 team in the world.

The Australia Cricketers’ Association is right to reject lie detector “testing,” as it has no scientific basis. While polygraphy is inherently biased against truth-tellers, the “test” can trivially be defeated using simple countermeasures that anyone can learn and polygraph operators cannot detect.

Continue reading ‘Polygraphing Players Is Not Cricket’ »

Anchorage Police Officer Who Allegedly Lied About His Identity Passed Polygraph

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Casey Grove reports for the Anchorage Daily News that an Anchorage Police Department officer who joined the force under someone else’s name passed a pre-employment polygraph examination. The officer has been indicted for passport fraud. Federal officials allege that the patrolman, who was hired under the name Rafael Espinoza, is actually Rafael Mora-Lopez, a Mexican national not entitled to work in the United States. Regarding the polygraph, Grove reports:

Part of the ongoing investigation will look into how the Mexican national slipped through the screening process for Anchorage police officers, Mew said. For example, officers must pass a lie-detector test during the interview process, Mew said.

“As part of that, do you ask them their name?” a reporter asked Mew.

“He obviously got through the polygraph,” Mew said. “I can tell you what we generally ask, but what’s at issue is what did we ask on that day, in that interview, and we haven’t gotten to that yet.”

One can expect that the Anchorage Police Department will come up with some rationalization for why the polygraph failed to detect deception in this instance rather than face the simple truth that polygraphy is junk science.

Wired Magazine on How to Beat a Polygraph Test

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The April 2011 edition of the UK edition of Wired magazine features an article by Mark Russell titled, “How to Beat a Polygraph Test.” Russell interviewed AntiPolygraph.org co-founder George Maschke for this column. For further reading on how polygraph “tests” can be beaten, see AntiPolygraph.org’s free book, The Lie Behind the Lie Detector.

Philadelphia Police Department to Re-Institute Pre-Employment Polygraph Screening

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Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey

WTFX Fox 29 Philadelphia reports that beginning this spring, Philadelphia Police Department applicants will be subjected to polygraph screening:

In the past two years we’ve seen a lot of Philadelphia police officers fired and criminally charged for cases of theft, assault, and drug dealer shake-downs.

So now, Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey is turning to an old tool to weed out potential bad apples.

On Tuesday, Ramsey confirmed to Fox 29 that starting this spring, all recruits headed for training at the police academy’s next class will undergo a lie detector or polygraph test.

Ramsey says polygraph tests will be administer [sic] to the 125 candidates for the next police recruit class in addition to the physical, psychological and written tests.

Continue reading ‘Philadelphia Police Department to Re-Institute Pre-Employment Polygraph Screening’ »

The Inconvenient Issue of Alleged Anthrax Killer Bruce Ivins’ Polygraph Results

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On Tuesday, 15 February 2011, the National Research Council made public its Review of the Scientific Approaches Used During the FBI’s Investigation of the Anthrax Letters, seriously undermining the Bureau’s case against U.S. Army researcher Bruce Ivins, whom the FBI maintains was the sole perpetrator of the anthrax mailings.

Polygraphy was not among the scientific approaches reviewed by the National Research Council–appropriately so, as it has no scientific basis. Nonetheless, the FBI did rely extensively on polygraphy in its investigation of the anthrax mailings, and Ivins passed a 2002 polygraph examination regarding the anthrax attacks. The FBI avers that Ivins passed the polygraph by using countermeasures.

Jeff Stein of the Washington Post addresses Ivins’ polygraph results in a new SpyTalk column titled, “Ivins Case’s Inconvenient Issue: His Polygraph.”

For prior commentary on Ivins’ polygraph examination, see “DOJ Rationalizes Away Polygraph’s Failure to Catch Alleged Anthrax Killer Bruce Ivins” and Scott Horton’s interview of AntiPolygraph.org co-founder George Maschke. For insightful commentary on the latest (non-polygraph related) developments in the Ivins case, see Salon.com columnist Glenn Greenwald’s article, “Serious Doubts Cast on FBI’s Anthrax Case Against Bruce Ivins.”