Criminal Justice: Inside the Lie Box

CRIMINAL JUSTICE Inside the Lie Box

In the summer of 1965, two Fort Worth gas-station attendants reported that a couple of Negro gunmen had robbed them of $3,000 in broad day light. Not until a month later did the city’s undermanned police force pick up a suspect. Then Negro Truck Driver Ervin Byrd, 33, was nabbed on an anonymous tip. Though he loudly pro tested his innocence, the cops were satisfied, and the victims quickly picked Byrd out of a lineup.

In fact, Byrd was totally innocent: his accusers had pocketed their employer’s cash; they admitted their crime after flunking a lie-detector test given by the oil company. After they made up the loss, the company filed no charges, and no one notified the police. Byrd, unable to make bail, stayed in jail for almost six months, vainly pleading for a session with a lie-detector test himself. Not until last Jan. 31 did the prosecutor finally permit the test, which the truck driver passed with flying colors; not until last month did the police finally erase Byrd’s “criminal record.” Byrd himself must now erase the $8,000 in debts that his wife and four children racked up during their breadwinner’s absence. Because of his experience, the polygraph, or “lie box,” has suddenly achieved new popularity in Texas.

Slightly Embarrassing. The Fort Worth prosecutor promptly tested McKinley Powell, 36, another Negro truck driver, who had been accused of murder last June. Powell also passed—whereupon his accuser confessed the crime. The day after Powell’s release, the prosecutor tested Donald G. Carter, 19, who had spent three months in jail awaiting trial for a burglary that he insisted he did not commit. Carter also passed; the police rechecked his story and belatedly discovered that he was telling them the truth from the start: he was in state prison on another charge at the time of the burglary.

Conceding that “this sort of thing is embarrassing,” Fort Worth’s top police announced a new policy: lie-detector tests for any suspect who requests one. Texas Attorney General Waggoner Carr suggested that the same policy may be advisable throughout the state. Amid all the good intentions, though, no one paid much heed to the hazards, notably the possibility of testing error and the fact that from now on, police may well assume the guilt of suspects who refuse the tests.

30% Error. In a country that is short on police and long on curbs against interrogation, better scientific crime detection seems an absolute necessity—all of which encourages makers of polygraphs, which cost anywhere from $675 to $2,650. Polygraph theorists maintain that lying causes physical reactions detectable by a trained polygrapher. While he asks questions, ranging from the pertinent to the impertinent, the gadget graphically records the subject’s pulse, blood pressure, respiration, and perspiration flow. The obvious weakness is not the machine but the man who interprets it. One study found that a good polygrapher is wrong three out of ten times. But no one really knows. A bad polygrapher can easily misread emotionally disturbed subjects, a suspect who, contrary to good polygraph policy, has been subjected to extended questioning just before testing, or even a badly frightened innocent. No American court yet admits lie-detector evidence without agreement providing for its admission.

All the same, roughly 3,000 U.S. polygraphers now give between 200,000 and 300,000 tests a year. In 1963, the U.S. Government alone gave 19,000 tests, excluding the uncounted number administered by the CIA. To Senator

Sam J. Ervin Jr. of North Carolina, the widespread use of such tests to probe federal job applicants is reminiscent of witchcraft: “Does the flesh of the applicant burn when a hot iron is applied to it? Heaven help us if we are reduced to alchemy as a technique of screening applicants for highly sensitive positions in the federal bureaucracy!”

Complete Misnomer. As a result of such congressional blasts, the polygraph-happy Defense Department now reminds subjects of their Fifth Amendment right to silence and requires their written consent before using the lie box. In private industry, labor arbitrators usually bar firing when evidence of wrongdoing is based solely on lie-detector tests or refusal to take them. New laws also forbid the tests as a condition of employment in six states (Alaska, California, Massachusetts, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington). J. Edgar Hoover calls the name lie detector “a complete misnomer” because the gaugers are totally incapable of “absolute judgments.” And the current state of the art suggests that Texans and others had best not rely on polygraphs to solve their crime problems.