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 Todd Wetherington | Daily Herald During a mock interrogation, Lt. Bobby Martin of the Halifax County Sheriff’s Office uses a voice stress analyzer to question Daily Herald Senior Writer Lance Martin about information concerning an unsolved murder. |
Had I been a real suspect and the “test” not an opportunity to learn about the Halifax County Sheriff’s Office newest weapon in the war on crime, I probably would have ended up behind bars, Martin told me.
Learning Tuesday I would be able to take a test Friday at the Halifax County Sheriff’s Office, I thought of the ways I should approach this. Obviously, I wanted to fool the machine but the way my mind works sometimes I wondered what would happen if I was too convincing, or somehow on the night in question, I was hypnotized and did it.
I don’t mean to make light of murder, but these are the things I think about. On Friday, however, I decided I would say I did it, pulled the trigger and killed someone, my reason just for the publicity.
This is not uncommon in law enforcement, Martin says. “Why they do it, I don’t know. Why would they put themselves in that situation?”
There are some techniques Martin asked not be divulged and I complied, including what murder it was. Other than that I was treated as a suspect whose name was provided to law enforcement through a Crimestoppers tip.
The testing is in the interview room of the sheriff’s office, not like an interview room you see in film noir where a bare light bulb is swinging overhead as the coppers try to sweat the truth from you. The room is sparse and not a place you want to be, especially when your alleged role in a murder is being dissected.
The mood is relaxed. Martin puts you at ease, explaining why you were called in, making the atmosphere as comfortable for the situation.
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The instrument measures your AM and FM modulation, the same modulations found in radios. When you become stressed, there is a disruption in your FM. “You can’t fix it because it’s all right here,” he says, pointing to his head, meaning it’s in your central nervous system.
To learn this instrument, Martin and Maj. Bruce Temple spent a week at the National Institute for Truth Verification in Maryland.
When Temple first discussed using this method at the sheriff’s office, Martin wasn’t sold. “I was skeptical,” he said. “I’ve been in law enforcement 15 years and it’s always polygraph, polygraph, polygraph.”
As Temple researched, Martin became more comfortable and after the classes, Martin was convinced it was the better way to go. “There are some polygraph operators who don’t like this and there are some voice stress analysts who don’t like the polygraph. I believe in this instrument.”
Martin has run 10 tests so far. “Out of the 10, I have got six that have been charged with something and the others, our suspects were cleared. I would call it successful.”
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So, here I am in the sheriff’s office. I made a decision to claim I did it about 30 minutes before we arrived. Saying I didn’t do it would give me no sense of the capabilities of this device.
Of the 15 questions I will be asked, we already know two will be lies for control purposes — my birthdate and whether I have ever driven over the posted speed limit, inconsequential questions but important for the upcoming questions.
I am at ease and believe I can beat this “machine” as I like to call it, although those who operate it call it an instrument.
There are only three questions pertaining to the murder, but the way they are worded are crucial and I answer yes to all of them: Following the victim to house, aiming a gun and shooting him.
I won, I thought, and was ready to be handcuffed and sent away to prison when I learned later the only thing I did was calmly answer one of the questions about my involvement, only to have the instrument discover my lie on the next question.
Had I been a true suspect, I would be arrested. “You came in here and lied to me,” Martin said. “In a situation like this I would charge you. I wouldn’t feel comfortable if I didn’t. You took me off the case, you put a fork in my path.”
Luckily, this was just a test to see this instrument in action. Having never taken a polygraph I don’t know what to compare it to. Obviously, it works, and obviously it is something the sheriff’s office plans to continue using. “It can be used from shoplifting all the way up to murder,” Martin explains, saying later, “It’s not going to clear every case because not everyone is going to take it.”
Martin swears by its effectiveness. “It hasn’t been beaten and I don’t think it will be.”
After failing to beat it, I would have to say it’s effective, too, and of course, I’m happy I’m not in jail.
Comments
Truthful Speeker wrote on Jan 9, 2009 10:49 AM:
In fact the DoD and many other US Federal agencies do use the CVSA. The CVSA is being used by the US military today. But the disinformation from those upset by the success of the CVSA continues, for purely financial reasons – by those who put profit ahead of the safety and security of the US citizenry. I have personally used the CVSA in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and it has a documented 98% accuracy rate under combat conditions after many thousands of military administered CVSA exams.
The Crowe case cited by Frank Speeker is the one example out of hundreds of thousands of successful CVSA examinations conducted in the US that the pro-polygraph camp uses in a weak attempt to discredit the CVSA. This simple fact is the police did not employ the CVSA properly in that case, and have admitted so. Therefore it was human failure – not a technology failure, as the vocal but miniscule pro-polygraph community would like to have the public believe. They never speak about the dozens of lawsuits against polygraph and the breaches of security they have caused to the US Government, such as Aldrich Ames, Larry Wu-Ti Chin and Karl Koecher (all were CIA Spies who repeatedly passed polygraph examinations), Defense Intelligence Agency Ana Belen Montes (who passed a polygraph while spying for Cuba). Nor do they speak of the fact that both the US National Academy of Sciences and US Supreme Court have discounted the polygraph as “junk science” which is less accurate than the “flip of a coin.”
The true SCAM is polygraph – with a 60-65% percent accuracy rate, compared to the 95% plus accuracy of the CVSA. The polygraph bureaucracy is on the ropes and will soon be put out of business by more modern truth verification technologies such as the CVSA, the FMRI and others. They are gasping for breath, and their only tactic is to divert attention away from their numerous and significant National Security failures, by attacking a technology that is quickly and almost totally replacing them. "
Frank Speeker wrote on Dec 30, 2008 1:45 PM:
That is why the Defense Department has banned use of CVSA and why no other federal agency is using it. Forty years of research, most of it funded by the federal government, has never produced results indicating accuracy better than chance. Even Charles Humble, founder of the National Institute of Truth Verification, admitted on ABC's Primetime that he knew of no research that showed that his CVSA worked as claimed. He also admitted he had a phony doctorate. His is the company that markets these devices to America's police agencies.
As an interrogation tool it might be helpful in getting admissions. Problems occur when law enforcement starts believing the test results, which usually are nothing more than confirmation of what they already want to believe. The most notorious case is the Stephanie Crowe murder in California. Her teen-aged brother and two of his friends were told they had failed voice stress tests and were questioned relentlessly for hours until two of the boys made admissions. All three were charged with the murder. They were held for two years, until DNA analysis matched the victim to blood found on the shirt of a schizophrenic transient who had been questioned and released at the time of the murder. He was convicted after a prolonged and expensive trial at which he was entitled to use the earlier arrests of the three boys in his own defense. The families sued all of the police agencies involved and NITV. The claims against the police agencies were dismissed and are still on appeal. The insurer for NITV paid off in an undisclosed amount.
For more about this scam to which law enforcement has fallen victim, take a look at the following:
The text version of the ABC Primetime interview with Charles Humble -
http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story?id=1786421&page=1
A Court TV story about the Crowe murder case -
http://www.courttv.com/movie/crowe/lie_detector.html "