Warwick L Nixon Wrote:
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> do you agree or disagree that taking or not taking
> a polygraph in now way indicates the potential
> results of same?
Nothing in life is certain save death & taxes..... and even taxes can be dodged if you've got a good tax lawyer or a genuis paranoid accountant.
Having said that..... I'd say that guilty people are, on average, far LESS likely to agree to take a polygraph than innocent people are.
Yes, some guilty will try to brazen it through..... some are even cold blooded or self delusional enough to pass. And some innocent are high minded enough to refuse to take it, or nervous enough to fail.
But on average.....
> and further do you agree or disagree that the
> results of a polygraph are not neccessarily
> accurate anyway?
>
>
> Warwick
Yep, not "neccessarily"accurate.... but certainly one more bit of fairly solid evidence to be taken under consideration.
And.... funny thing, but there are actually ALTERNATIVES to the polygraph, that have a better success rate. One I recall involves an actual brain scan, another monitors the eye (movement & dilation), uh, I think both work on a RECOGNITION principle rather than "veracity" per se, and as such are more prone to accuracy (example: showing the accused something he KNOWS..... like a photo of the crime scene, or a piece of physical evidence..... will result in a different physiological reaction than will showing the accused something he's NOT familiar with, like a photo of a DIFFERENT crime scene, or an object NOT connected to the crime).
It's worth noting that the 5th amendment was written during an era of physical TORTURE..... it was specifically designed to prevent abuses like those at the Salem Witch trials (one accused was staked to the ground, with progressively heavier stones placed on his chest, making it progressively harder to breath, in an attempt to force a confession..... but...knowing that a confession would result in his execution anyway, AS WELL AS make paupers of his family via confiscation of his estate, this man resisted..... and died when the weight of the stones reached the point where they broke his ribs & caved in his chest, killing him instantly. His fortitude won him a faster and less degrading death, as well as protected his estate for his heirs).
The concept of the 5th amendment as a privacy right, of people having the right to HIDE EVIDENCE, to not testify at all or to keep their garbage untouched & their body inviolate from testing (DNA, polygraphy, blood, etc) was NOT intended..... and is actually outdated in an era of BENIGN veracity testing.
The Polygraph IS accurate enough to often prove useful.... so long as you ask the right questions. EXISTING alternate tests are in many ways MORE useful, since they can painlessly extract information that the accused may not willingly give..... and if the 5th amendment was modified to specifically ALLOW noninvasive testing without permission (much as it has been stretched to allow nonconsensual DNA testing of people convicted of felonies, in hopes of matching them up to OTHER crimes).... thereby expanding the potential commercial market for such devices.... then research dollars would quickly perfect them.
Kenuchelover.