TH's polygraphs

[GrainneDhu]

Yes, I learned a lot about inconclusive polygraphs from the Smiths (Gabriel Johnson case). Of course, at the time, I thought they were talking a bunch of rot, but maybe not?

I'd say "evasive" means Terri was being evasive. Strange that she would be evasive when answering questions about her step-son's disappearance.
You'd think she'd answer questions directly and give as much information as possible, not try to evade the question. Hmmmm . . . I don't think evading the questions is a way to pass a polygraph.

What I do not understand is how one can "evade" questions during a polygraph. The questions are always yes/no questions. One either answers yes or no. That's it.

So how does someone evade a question when there are only two allowable responses?

 

[BeanE]

What I do not understand is how one can "evade" questions during a polygraph. The questions are always yes/no questions. One either answers yes or no. That's it.

So how does someone evade a question when there are only two allowable responses?

That is exactly what leads me to think of inconclusive, which is the result when the examiner can simply not determine whether the person was being truthful or untruthful. Inconclusive is often misconstrued as some sort of dishonesty, and the term "evasive" would fit with that common misunderstanding.

 

[citigirl]

What I do not understand is how one can "evade" questions during a polygraph. The questions are always yes/no questions. One either answers yes or no. That's it.

So how does someone evade a question when there are only two allowable responses?

Is "I don't remember" another possible response?

 

[Donjeta]

Is "I don't remember" another possible response?

It's a yes-no procedure but I suppose you could always refuse to answer a specific question saying you don't remember and maybe they would leave it out of the test or something.

But it wouldn't be an option on some LDT questions, I think. People who answered "I don't remember" to questions like "Are you responsible for Kyron's disappearance?" or "Do you know where he is?" or "Did you try to hire a hitman?" might get a few odd looks. You want a resounding NO for those kinds of questions.

 

[wondering1]

What I do not understand is how one can "evade" questions during a polygraph. The questions are always yes/no questions. One either answers yes or no. That's it.

So how does someone evade a question when there are only two allowable responses?

Since the poly guages truthfulness not by the verbal answer given, but by the physical response in giving the answer, it seems to me that there is probably a measure of physical response that could be indicative of neither truthfulness nor deceptiveness. Maybe that's what an evasive answer would be. jmoo

 

[eyes4crime]

What I do not understand is how one can "evade" questions during a polygraph. The questions are always yes/no questions. One either answers yes or no. That's it.

So how does someone evade a question when there are only two allowable responses?

I'm amazed at the importance people put on the polygraph. Depending on what state you are in, the polygrapher may or may not be certified. Polys DO NOT measure deception, evasivness, or any other such thing. It measures your blood pressure, heart rate, sweat gland functioning, and pulse (the autonomic nervous system). So please be careful and don't have that extra cup of coffee on the am of your poly. Don't have diabetes, MS, or be experiencing hot flashes from menopause. Make sure you have been on your medications for a long time with no recent changes and make sure you have no undiscovered underlying disease states. And most important - don't be nervous or anxiety ridden about your missing child. What a hoax... moo mho

*snip*
Post Test
3. Post test begins with the examiner analyzing the data from the responses of a physiological manner to determine deception. The examiner will be able to come to a conclusion that the examinee was being honest, deceptive or unable to determine honesty or deception, which means the test was inconclusive.

http://www.ehow.com/way_5294569_asked-during-lie-detector-test.html

 

[Donjeta]

They should try to take some of the individual differences in the autonomous nervous system functioning into account by asking questions about the relevant issues and determining a personal baseline to which the results are compared. If you have e.g. an underlying undiagnosed disease that raises your blood pressure it would be present both during the control questions and the case relevant questions.

But still, anyone can get more nervous when asked "Did you murder your boss?" than "Is your name Donjeta?". It's tricky when it's obvious which are the important questions. I think they should concentrate on developing guilty knowledge tests. It's a variation of LDT in which you are tested on your reactions on stuff that presumably only the perp knows. Innocent people who don't know which are the important items and which are the distractor items would be expected to be equally nervous throughout. But it would be rather hard to do in Kyron's case in this case because the police would have to be sure what happened first.

 

[eyes4crime]

Differences in our autonomic nervous system can change by the minute depending on what we are confronted with (fight or flight). If your body interprets a question as flight - your body will automatically respond as such.

Also, over a couple hour time span, blood levels of medication can/will increase or decrease depending on what med. you took. Caffeine may produce the jitters in the beginning and wear off toward the 2nd hour. MHO is that the polygraph should be banned from this country. Anyone who rests their present and future reputation on the poly is taking a huge risk. moo mjho

 

[Adrienne37]

Flunking one polygraph is somewhat understandable, but flunking two or more? Not likely. JMHO but she was deceptive, she was evasive, and there's a good possibility that she flat out lied. It wasn't influenced by medication use, it wasn't influenced by a chronic medical condition. It was influenced by the fact that she knew she couldnt' provide a factual response so either chose to "evade" the answer or attempt to "deceive." I have no reason to doubt whatsoever that Terri didn't pass the tests when her own father admitted that she hadn't passed them. Again, JMO.

 

[debs]

Flunking one polygraph is somewhat understandable, but flunking two or more? Not likely. JMHO but she was deceptive, she was evasive, and there's a good possibility that she flat out lied. It wasn't influenced by medication use, it wasn't influenced by a chronic medical condition. It was influenced by the fact that she knew she couldnt' provide a factual response so either chose to "evade" the answer or attempt to "deceive." I have no reason to doubt whatsoever that Terri didn't pass the tests when her own father admitted that she hadn't passed them. Again, JMO.

We don't know the circumstances of her polys. We just don't. We have speculation, we have supposition, and we have hearsay. But we just don't know.

 

[citigirl]

We don't know the circumstances of her polys. We just don't. We have speculation, we have supposition, and we have hearsay. But we just don't know.

You are right. Like everything else in this case, we have to "connect the dots" ourselves. But this is one piece of information that Kaine says came from Terri herself, and she has never denied it (or any other accusation that she is involved in this tragedy). Her father alluded to it. It caused LE to have to appeal to the Skyline community to corroborate.

The questioning that early had to be about her timeline on the day of K's disappearance.

 

[debs]

Her lack of giving any information, either as a verification or a denial, is not reason enough for me to measure her guilt.

 

[Dee10]

Weren't these polys given by the FBI? I have no problem with these given as an investigative measure used to rule people in or out. Foolproof no, useful...well, LE obviously finds them to be. I don't see a problem and if you don't want to take one, you don't have too. Personally, I would take one.

 

[bessie]

I can't draw any conclusions regarding Terri's guilt or innocence based on what we've heard about the LDT's.

Whether she's guilty or not, surely she was anxious during the first one so soon after Kyron disappeared. No doubt KH and DY were, too, but Terri even more so because she is the SM and the one who brought him to school that morning. So her anxiety was compounded by the fear that LE might look at her as a suspect. That's perfectly understable, imo. If that natural anxiety caused her problems with the first LDT, it's no surprise that she'd be reluctant to take a second.

The third time (the second test) becomes a bit of a problem for me, though. She had trouble with the first test, ran out on the second try, then found the resolve to go back and sit again. But she still doesn't pass. I get a little stuck trying to reason that one.

Nevertheless, it doesn't add up to guilt. At best, it only tells me that she was trying to hide something. But does that something have anything to do with Kyron's disappearance? We don't know.

To move any further toward a conclusion, I need at least two pieces of information:

• The nature of the troublesome questions

• The consistency of her false or inconclusive responses. IOW, did she mess up on the same questions in both tests?

The above notwithstanding, in evaluating all of the factors to make a determination about Terri's guilt or innocence based only on what we know today, the LDT situation weighs on the guilty side, but not that heavily.

 

[GrainneDhu]

True, it is up to each individual whether they believe the reporter. I choose to believe it because it makes sense & I highly doubt the reporter would use the words "under orders from defense attorney Stephen Houze" if not factual for legal reasons given this attorney particularily

Ethically, I would hope that no reporter would misattribute something to anyone.

Factually, however, the Supreme Court has ruled that it is okay for a reporter to make up quotes and attribute them to a subject, so long as there is no actual malice involved on the part of the reporter:

http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/89-1799.ZO.html

Which is why I take anything I read in the media with a grain of salt.

 

[GrainneDhu]

Is "I don't remember" another possible response?

No. Nor is a qualified yes or no, such as "yes but I usually do that" or "no but I do that when I'm sick."

Often, if the subject cannot give a simple yes or no, the interrogator will re-work the question and narrow it down until they can get that yes or no answer.

It really is just yes or no; no other answers can be scored and so if a subject simply cannot restrict themselves to yes or no, that question is scored as inconclusive.

 

[GrainneDhu]

They should try to take some of the individual differences in the autonomous nervous system functioning into account by asking questions about the relevant issues and determining a personal baseline to which the results are compared. If you have e.g. an underlying undiagnosed disease that raises your blood pressure it would be present both during the control questions and the case relevant questions.

But still, anyone can get more nervous when asked "Did you murder your boss?" than "Is your name Donjeta?". It's tricky when it's obvious which are the important questions. I think they should concentrate on developing guilty knowledge tests. It's a variation of LDT in which you are tested on your reactions on stuff that presumably only the perp knows. Innocent people who don't know which are the important items and which are the distractor items would be expected to be equally nervous throughout. But it would be rather hard to do in Kyron's case in this case because the police would have to be sure what happened first.

I agree that guilty knowledge polygraphs are more promising than the traditional type but they are still far from conclusive (or, for me personally, convincing).

A guilty knowledge polygraph is a variation on an old interrogation technique whereby the subject makes statements that, in theory, only LE and the perpetrator would know.

The problem with this in previous cases is controlling what every single LE and witness says. Some subjects are extremely good at figuring out what LE wants to hear and some LE are amazingly garrulous.

An example of a suspect who was extremely good at figuring out what LE wanted to hear was Henry Lee Lucas. He probably only killed three people (one of which could be argued to have been self defence) and he was definitely not the sharpest knife in the block. He started confessing to murders and pretty soon, LE over most of the US was interested in him. He ended up confessing to over 600 murders.

Oddly enough, his confessions were always consistent with the details known by the LE person interviewing him about them.

It was later shown that in the vast majority of his confessions, the "secret" details had been inadvertently fed to him by the investigators questioning him.

So, as a hypothetical example, say a suspect is taken to the police station to be questioned. On his way to the station, the police officer driving the car tells him that the victim was murdered via three knife slashes across the throat. The subject asks lots of questions and the slip of the tongue is forgotten by the officer involved.

Then at the police station, while being questioned, the suspect refers to the victim as having their throat cut. The interrogators, none of whom were in the car for the ride to the station, believe this is an example of guilty knowledge.

If they use a polygraph and bring out a series of potential weapons, a factually innocent person under those circumstances may well have an emotional response to being shown a knife, which they would infer had been used in the crime.

Finally, as you say, there are cases like Kyron's where the investigators probably don't have any physical items known to be used in the crime.