Recently in Lie Detection Category

New York Times published this article talking about how innocent people confess to crimes they did not commit.  Anytime you are questioned, or think you are helping someone by giving information for a crime HAVE A LAWYER PRESENT!!! 

As stated in this article, "Proving innocence after a confession, however, is rare. Eight of the defendants in Professor Garrett's study had actually been cleared by DNA evidence before trial, but the courts convicted them anyway."

Look around this page and be sure to take the time to look at this article by Professor Garrett.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/us/14confess.html?_r=1&no_interstitial

The case I'm going to discuss is several years old but I found it very interesting and relevant to psychology and law. In 1992, a hunter found the body of a decomposing woman while hunting. After the police found out that the dead woman had been a prostitute, it led them to believe that a possible suspect was Thomas Huskey, a man known for bringing woman to the area. Huskey had a reputation for taking women, tying them up behind the zoo, beating them, and then having sex with them.

About a week after the first body was found, police searching the area found three more dead women. Huskey was arrested and confessed, on tape, to all four murders. During the confession, Huskey changed his voice and expressions and said that he was now "Kyle". Apparently, "Kyle" was the one who killed the women, not Thomas. After "Kyle" emerged, "Philip Daxx", a British man, surfaced. This lead investigators to believe that Huskey had multiple personality disorder.

After 6 years had passed, the trial finally began. Huskey plead not guilty by insanity. The defense psychologist said that Huskey suffered from multiple personality disorder, however, the prosecution psychologist said that Huskey simply created these personalities to manipulate the court. During the course of the trial, the cellmate of Huskey, testified that Huskey had read Sybil and was going to try to make it seem like he had multiple personality disorder to avoid the death penalty. Huskey's mother also agreed that he did not have this disorder. To further the case against Huskey, the prosecution noted that he gave specific details about the crime while he was Tom but if he really did have multiple personality disorder, he would have no recollection of these memories, since they belong to "Kyle".

After the jury deliberated for quite some time, they still had not come to a unanimous decision. The judge declared a mistrial. Huskey was to be tried again in 2002 but he asked for a lawyer during his confession, which was then ruled inadmissible. Huskey is currently in prison for 44 years for previous rape charges.

On another website, I found that the murder charges against Huskey were dropped due to detective errors. He is still in jail for the rape charges mentioned earlier.

Psychology is obviously present here. Because multiple personality disorder is so rare, it probably wasn't Huskey's  best idea to pretend he had it. Any personality disorder is severe and it's likely that Huskey may have had some other form of one. Although he wasn't proven guilty, it seems pretty possible that he did commit the four murders. I'm glad that he's at least in jail for the rape crimes he committed so that he can't go out and murder more innocent women.

http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/criminal_mind/psychology/multiples/index.html 

Here is a Penn & Teller Episode about polygraph tests.  They talk a little about the history of polygraph tests, talk a lot about skepticisms of the test, as well as ways to fool a polygraph. 

They use a lot of profanity, especially the f bomb, so if you are offended by this, please don't watch!

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9NSXy176oA&NR=1
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bScv6kfxRyE&feature=related

Veritaserum... Fact or Fiction?

After reading other people's posts this afternoon about lie detection, I started looking for real life chemicals that might make someone spill their secrets. Most of what I found led me to believe that truth serums are better left for pages in a science-fiction novel but I did find one article interesting, on Wikipedia of all places.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_serum

Granted, Wikipedia's reliability isn't the greatest but generally speaking they are good for some stuff so I am going to take their word for it for arguments sake. According to this article, there are certain chemicals that can induce people to tell the truth. These chemicals have been deemed unethical under the grounds of torture in international law however they can be used for psychiatry purposes. The reliability of these drugs are called to question in this article as it states that the drugs do not actually cause people to tell the truth, it is the fact that the people the drugs are being administered to BELIEVE that they cannot tell a lie under the influence of the drug. It also states that the drugs causes people to talk more frequently thereby releasing more information and maybe telling more truths.

I found this information very interesting especially the part about it being illegal in international law. Now I am just as much for civil liberties as the next person but I do not feel that this should fall under the guidelines as torture from an international legal standard. I suppose one could argue that in a very contrived scenario where someone is administering truth serum on a governmental figure to obtain information (let's say codes to our nuclear weapons arsenal) then YES maybe then you can view truth serum as torture (although if someone wants access to our nukes then they probably don't care about international law anyway). What do you think? Is a truth serum unethical? If so why or why not?

 

(For those that didn't get the title reference, Veritaserum is a fictional truth serum)

 

 

            When I think of lie detection I think of the movie Meet the Parents when the dad hooks the daughter's boyfriend up to the lie detection test in his secret room in the den. However, everyone knows that lie detection tests are not always accurate, and there are some ways of tricking the test to make it appear like you are telling the truth. This got me thinking about other ways, besides a test, that people give off the impression that they are lying. I came upon a website that lays out four different categories in which Police and other people such as managers and employer go about determining if someone is lying. The four categories include deception, emotional gestures, interactions/reactions, and verbal. Each of these categories provided many interesting tests that give away that a person is most likely lying. However there were a couple that stood out.  For example; people that are lying are more likely to not use contractions. If someone accuses you of stealing money out of his wallet, if the person is telling the trust they are more likely to respond by saying "I didn't steal money out of your wallet" vs. "I did not steal money out of your wallet."  Also, another way in which you can test to see if someone is lying is to change the subject. Ironically if you are the person lying and your confronter changes the subject you most likely think you got a way with the lie; however, this is the catch. If you are telling the truth you would be thrown off by this subject change and want to revisit the discussion on lying because you want to make sure the person realizes that you were telling the truth. There are many more examples of how you can tell people are lying so if you are interested I would check out the website!

 

 

 

http://www.blifaloo.com/info/lies.php

One subject that has always been intriguing to me was the lie detector.  After googling the subject many websites came up on how to beat a lie detector, which was surprising to me after learning and reading that it is very difficult to do.  I did come upon a valuable website that explains how the entire lie detection process works and who is involved with detecting lies.  First, it must be understood that lies are not ever detected but the physiological responses that appear when someone may be lying is what is detected.  It is obvious to many that lie detectors are used sometimes when someone is a suspect of a crime committed.  During a lie detecting session the person being tested is alone with the polygraph examiner, who now prefers to be called a forensic psychophysiologist.  It depends on the state, but most examiners must have prior training and education on how to use the computerized polygraph.  This is where psychology becomes involved.  One example of a polygraph examiner school is the Axciton International Academy.  At this school one thing that must be satisfied by students is that they pass a 10-week course that teaches psychology, physiology, ethics, history, question construction, psychological analysis of speech, and chart analysis and test-data analysis. The fact that psychology is involved in their education makes perfect sense.  Psychology could help explain why people lie and what their motives are. On the legal side of things, there is a low chance that a person's polygraph results will be used in court.  The only state in the U.S. that allows for open showing of polygraph results is New Mexico.  All the other states need to first meet requirements that allow for the results to be shown.  During a legal case both the prosecutor and defender must agree to show the results in court.  Lie detection seems to be portrayed differently in the media and I think that is where most people get their opinions and information about lie detection.  Personally, I think polygraphs are overused in law shows because in real life lie detectors are not the first route a prosecutor uses.  This website offers much more information; check it out if this topic interests you.

http://people.howstuffworks.com/lie-detector4.htm