There's a new angle in the Trayvon Martin case. Apparently George Zimmerman passed a police administered lie detector test right after the incident - and passed.
According to a “confidential report” prepared by the Sanford Police Department, Zimmerman, 28, willingly submitted to a computer voice stress analyzer (CVSA) “truth verification” on February 27. Investigators concluded that he “has told substantially the complete truth in regards to this examination.”
Zimmerman, the report noted, “was classified as No Deception Indicated (NDI).”
Along with questions about whether his first name was George and if it was Monday, Zimmerman was asked, “Did you confront the guy you shot?’ He answered, “No.” He was also asked, “Were you in fear for your life, when you shot the guy.” Zimmerman replied, “Yes.”
Before the CVSA test, Zimmerman--who was apparently not accompanied by legal counsel--signed a Sanford Police Department release stating that he was undergoing the examination “voluntarily, without duress, coercion, threat or promise.”
Now, these tests are not infallible, but you have to be pretty damned good at deception, almost to the point of being a psychopathic liar who actually believes his own lies are the truth.
I doubt George Zimmerman is that good...although of course, if he is, the White is missing out by not immediately pardoning him and putting him to work on the Obama campaign, or sticking him in Jay Carney's slot as White House press secretary. Carney seems to be showing the strain lately, and is even suffering the fate of being mocked as he attempts to tell the usual fairy tales.:
I doubt he could pass a similar test on what he's putting out there and come up with the same results Zimmerman did.
7 comments:
While it is true that lie detector tests are not admissable as eveidence in court, they can be and are used as excellent tools to eliminate suspects in a crime and to save law enforcement officals time and energy in focusing on someone who is innocent.
You are quite correct in pointing out how dificult they are to fool. What is more likely to happen is the person is really telling the truth but they will fail the test any way. This is why courts have wisely excluded them from being used as evidence in a court case.
Again, they can make excellent tools for law enforcemtn to use to exclude suspects from a crime. If a person passes one of these, he or she is innnocent of the crime. If, in fact, Mr. Zimmeran passed one of these this would likely explain why the police initally did not press charges.
In any event, Mr. Zimmerman is likely in a worse position than any single American is in right now. The powers that be MUST have a conviction against him regardless of his innocence or guilt.
Furthermore he and his team, that is what "team" he actually has, made an unforced error regarding the web site for funding his legal defense that was set up in not disclosing this. At this point without divine intervention I don't see how he has any chance here. As such, I pray for him either for 1.)divine intervention that he can get a fair trial and be acquitted if he is innocent or
2.) that he really is the vile human being the media and this government have made him out to be.
Without some type of supernatural or other unforseen intervention I simply don't see how he gets a fair trial. If he initially passed a lie detector test and gien how hard they are to beat, this would certainly explain why the police initally declined to hold him. If this is really so, unfortunately politics had to get involved and justice may be subverted because of political interests.
If a person passes one of these, he or she is innnocent of the crime.
Not true in any way. The lie detector is only useful in intimidating a witness into a confession. They're scientifically garbage and any lawman will tell you so.
They're also very easy to beat. The Green River killer beat it and went on to kill again. The following spies beat it: Ignatz Theodor Griebl, Karel Frantisek Koecher, Jiri Pasovsky, Larry Wu-tai Chin, Aldrich Hazen Ames, Ana Belen Montes, and Leandro Aragoncillo.
A lie detector is notoriously easy to beat and is pretty much as useful as using astrology to pick out guilty parties. If Zimmerman beat it, it simply means that either he knows how to beat one (an easy task) or he didn't think he'd done anything wrong. Though, if true, the latter makes him a psychopath.
Actually Roland, such a test is not 'easy to beat' unless you're a pathological liar, very knowledgeable about the tests or a sociopath.There's no evidence Zimmerman fits into any of these categories, to be fair.
However, you're totally correct that they can be beaten and don't prove guilt or innocence in any way.The way the questions are phrased also has a lot to do with it, and was a factor in some of the cases you mention.
The tests are admissible as evidence under certain conditions, such as when it is part of a police report/investigation, as this one was. But a judge will usually caution a jury that such tests should not be regarded as conclusive proof of guilt or innocence.
However, this will undoubtedly help influence a jury pool - just as the media frenzy involving the 'mistake' in editing a tape of the 991 call or the hoopla involved in charging Zimmerman's wife with perjury was designed to do, in the other direction.
The idea here is to pressure Zimmerman into copping a plea for a lesser offense like manslaughter, since there's probably no way they can make murder two stick and they absolutely NEED to convict him of something.
The best lie detector ever:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rN7pkFNEg5c
OK, very funny...just so you realize that any cop actually doing this would be suspended if not fired.
Also, this has nothing to do with George Zimmerman voluntarily agreeing to take a lie detector test.
Regards,
Rob
Lie detector tests are easy to fool because they're based on nonsense. There is no correlation between "rapid eye movement" and "lying". "Lie detectors" do not work in objective scientific tests.
All interrogation techniques, and that's what "lie detectors" are, are either based on intimidation or establishing trust. "Lie detectors" are based on trust.
The idea behind the "lie detector" is that you claim to the subject that you have a "magic box" that will allow you to know whether they are telling the truth or not. The idea is that you ask a bunch of basline questions that you already know the answers to and "tune" the box to give the correct answers (real operators don't even do that, the box draws random squiggles and they just arbitrarily change what the squiggles mean). This convinces the subject you can tell what he's doing.
At this point the interrogator shifts and argues that since he "knows" what the subject is guilty of anyway, he'll be better off just coming clean.
All "lie detectors" are is a way to trick people into making admissions. That's it.
I found your comment interesting. I've noticed before that most people know absolutely nothing about how a polygraph (AKA 'lie detector') really works.
I'm familiar with polygraphs, since my company screens employees for confidential positions with various corporations. People hire us because they know that while the test isn't infallible, (which is why they're not admissible evidence in a court room) it's a pretty good indication in the majority of cases if performed by a skilled, experienced operator.
They're based on (among other things) involuntary fluctuations in heart rate, perspiration, and neural reactions to questions..I have no clue where you got that 'rapid eye movement' stuff, although police officers have been known to use that as an indication in verbal interrogations.
Even if you were correct, you would have to prove that Zimmerman not only thought that polygraphs were 'fake' but had the ability to con his way through a test and control his body reactions to that degree.Few people do.
It's SOP to test subjects out by asking them a few test question to determine their skill level, if any, when it comes to gaming the test by controlling their body reactions.
A skilled operator would correct for that factor when interpreting the results.
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