Polygraphs are so 20th-century. Here's the wave of the future:

"The Brain Meter"

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Quote from Lee Hon: I wouldn't agree to it. While I'm sure there will be some who disagree with me on this, as far as I'm concerned I don't believe the polygraph is effective in establishing innocence. I had an Indecency With a Child case a couple of years ago
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Of all defendants I believe child molesters are the most likely to "pass" a ploygraph. Their entire life is based upon a lie. Just imagine how they lie to themselves in order to keep getting up in the mornings.

Terry, didn't that case you talked about get reversed because of the detective's antics? I think I once heard about one where a confession obtained in that manner was held to be involuntary . . .

I swear I remember my crim pro professor going over the copier machine facts oh so long ago in law school. I believe that the court did find the confession to be involuntary. However, I'm too lazy to reseach it this afternoon.

I'm telling you, everything is on the internet. You are only a Google away from whatever you need. For a discussion of confessions and the fake polygraph by copy machine, read the story.

This web site says it is just an urban legend.

This web site is a law review article that in footnote 59 mentions how several Detroit police officers used the copy machine technique.

I think Andy on NYPD Blue would teach such a technique.
[This message was edited by John Bradley on 03-12-04 at .]

[This message was edited by John Bradley on 03-12-04 at .]

[This message was edited by John Bradley on 03-12-04 at .]

quote:

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Originally posted by John Bradley:
Other than considering a dismissal, what is the purpose of a polygraph?

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If the examiner is one of 'OURS', and is a good one, he will have had the subject waive his rights in writing prior to the exam, and then will confront the subject with his indicators of deception afterwards (hopefully with a recorder running - although this could lead to a difficult editing problem later). In most of the ones I've seen, the subject will at least change his story. If he doesn't, we haven't gained anything but bargaining leverage but we certainly haven't lost anything either. If he passes, we haven't lost anything in a trial sense. It seems to be a no lose situation.

The article claims only that it was a 'famous case'. This well renowned event is the only example that isn't documented in piece.

I'm sure it was some clever law professor's hypothetical that was entertaining enough to have been repeated.

This web link says the story began in Pennsylvania.

Think anything useful will come from these eggheads cracking more eggs (or is it heads)?

The article

Secrets of brain could reshape the courtroom

By Tina Hesman Saey
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Tuesday, Oct. 09 2007

New techniques to peer into the human brain could shake up the legal system in ways not seen since the advent of DNA testing.

Today, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is launching a $10 million project to bring lawyers, judges, philosophers, legal scholars and scientists together to address how to use in the courtroom breakthroughs in
neuroscience. Brain science could improve lie-detection and influence the judging and sentencing of juveniles and the mentally ill. It could help choose unbiased juries, determine more precisely when brain death occurs, assess pain and suffering in lawsuits and even help negotiate contracts.

Washington University and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign are among the 25 universities participating in the nationwide Law and Neuroscience Project.

The project has three working groups. One will consider legal matters stemming from brain damage due to accidents, disease or genetics. Another group will address addiction and its legal ramifications. A third, co-chaired by a
Washington University scientist, will investigate normal decision-making. That could include learning how greed or temptation might drive people with "normal" brains to commit white-collar crimes, or how judges and juries assess guilt and determine punishment.

The MacArthur Foundation surveyed its fellows � winners of an award commonly called the "genius grant" � to find new projects for the foundation. Stanford University professor Robert Morris Sapolsky, a MacArthur fellow, wrote a letter suggesting that neuroscience could transform the judicial system.

"It's fairly radical, but it stirred the MacArthur Foundation to think about
this matter," said Dr. Marcus E. Raichle, a Washington University neurologist who sits on the project's board and co-directs the decision-making group.

The project, headed by Michael S. Gazzaniga at the University of California at Santa Barbara, is a collaboration between scientists and legal thinkers that doesn't usually happen until after science has invaded the courtroom, said Owen
D. Jones. Jones is a professor of law and biology at Vanderbilt University. He teaches one of the few courses on law and neuroscience in the country and is co-chairman with Raichle of the decision-making group.

Raichle has been thinking about the intersection between neuroscience and the law for years. He had a role in the birth of two commonly used brain-scanning techniques in his laboratory at Washington University. For two years, he worked
on a panel convened by the National Academy of Sciences to study polygraphs, better known as lie-detectors.

Results of polygraph tests aren't admissible in court and their scientific value is dubious, but that doesn't stop them from being used widely in
investigations and screening government workers, he said.

"The people administering it believe it, and so do the crooks, but the evidence just doesn't support it," Raichle said. "It only works if you believe it works and you're a crook. There's a better than average chance that you'll confess,
but that's not much of a recommendation in my opinion."

At least two companies claim that they can use a type of brain scan called fMRI to detect lies with greater accuracy than a polygraph. Studies have suggested that brain scans are not yet accurate enough to use in a legal situation.

The project aims to help judges and lawyers better understand such technologies and set guidelines for their use.

One concern is that jurors might give more weight to brain scans than they deserve because they are high-tech and visual, Jones said. But brain scanning is fairly new and is not yet accurate enough to predict how a person might act in a given situation, Raichle said.

The foundation, a private, independent grantmaking institution, has given $10 million to fund the project for three years. In the first year, the scientists, legal scholars and jurists will lay out problems for future research and decide how to proceed.

That's not as easy as it sounds, Raichle said. Lawyers and scientists speak different languages and think about things differently.

"The first step is overcoming jargon. I've actually gone out and bought Black's law dictionary," Raichle said.

More insidious are commonly used words, such as "intent," that may have very specific legal meanings different from how scientists or lay people might use them, Jones said.

After the legal questions have been laid out, the project will fund research to help answer them.

Ultimately, the project may make policy recommendations, create materials to use in law and neuroscience courses, provide primers for judges and lawyers, and set standards for how brain science is used in the courtroom.

"One way or another, neuroscience is entering the legal system," Jones said. "Our goal is to ensure it doesn't do so in a haphazard way."

How about just using the $10 million dollars to fund the use of science that is already available but underused? For example, how many backlogged DNA tests could be run with that money, leading to the resolution of cold cases?

Such studies as these seem to work from the premise that human beings are motivated by some chemical or electrical trigger other than simple human judgment.

I agree that they are mainly good for investigation / confessions. I had a juvenile who insisted to his parents for MONTHS that he was innocent and every other high school kid who came forward and said he confessed to them were coerced by the police. The parents were very caring and worried about their child being railroaded while he swore his innocence and they paid big bucks for a defense attorney that insisted on trial. It was an extremely effective way for the juvenile to have a way out--he had dug himself so deep between the friends who helped him and his parents that he couldn't tell the truth....Until he failed the polygraph.

(Alternate title of this post: "Duh.")

USA Today article


Sociopaths could be lacking a 'guardian angel of behavior'

By Kathleen Fackelmann, USA TODAY
November 7, 2007

In the 1991 film The Silence of the Lambs, British actor Anthony Hopkins paints an Academy Award-winning portrait of a serial killer. Now scientists are studying brain images that may help explain why real-life psychopaths display that same chilling lack of remorse.

The research, which was presented this week at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego, suggests that violent people probably have abnormalities in sections of the brain that are involved in making moral judgments.

The findings could raise questions about the way society deals with violent killers and others.

"Should psychopaths be punished if, for reasons beyond their control, they do not have the appropriate brain circuitry to process moral dilemmas?" asks researcher Adrian Raine of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

Raine is among researchers who have used scanners to take snapshots of the brain. They study the images, looking for damage to regions that control rage or the ability to make a moral decision.

Small studies have suggested that a malfunction in certain brain regions might predispose people to violent behavior.

At the neuroscience meeting, Raine presented new findings from a large meta-analysis of 47 small brain-imaging studies. These smaller, inconclusive studies took brain scans of antisocial people, including psychopaths, as well as people without a history of violence.

After analyzing the findings on more than 1,400 people, Raine and his colleagues found that killers and antisocial people tended to have abnormalities in parts of the brain that are involved in making moral decisions, such as the prefrontal cortex.

"The prefrontal cortex is like the guardian angel of behavior," Raine says.

This region helps process emotions such as rage and the impulse to act out. "It's the part of the brain that says, 'Hey, hold on a minute.' "

The findings are the strongest to date to link brain abnormalities, particularly in the prefrontal cortex, to violent behavior, Raine says.

Preliminary findings from another brain-imaging study suggest aggressive teenage boys may have abnormalities not just in the prefrontal cortex, but also in the amygdala, a region that processes fear.

Guido Frank, a researcher at the University of Colorado-Denver, took brain scans of such young people and found that they overreact to a threat and that their prefrontal cortexes seem less able to control the urge to lash out.

Violent behavior probably is caused by a lot of factors, including exposure to abuse as a child, an impoverished environment and genetic factors, says Erik Parens, a bioethicist at the Hastings Center, a bioethics research institute in Garrison, N.Y. No one factor can explain a violent act, he says.

Even if researchers prove psychopaths have brain damage that predisposes them to violence, the findings might not be an excuse that will hold up in court, Raine says: "We must protect society."

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"It's the part of the brain that says, 'Hey, hold on a minute.' "

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I thought that was the little guy (girl) that sits on your shoulder saying, "Don't do it. You'll hate yourself in the morning." When the other one is saying "Go ahead. Ya know ya want to."

quote:

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"Should psychopaths be punished if, for reasons beyond their control, they do not have the appropriate brain circuitry to process moral dilemmas?" asks researcher Adrian Raine of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

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If a prenatal diagnosis could detect these psychopaths in utero should the mother be advised to abort?

quote:

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"Should psychopaths be punished if, for reasons beyond their control, they do not have the appropriate brain circuitry to process moral dilemmas?" asks researcher Adrian Raine of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

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Okay, let me think about this for a moment. Um... YES!!! Unless researcher Adrian Raine is willing to take all of those poor unwitting victims into his home instead of releasing them in MY neighborhood.

quote:

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Originally posted by AndreaW:

quote:

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"Should psychopaths be punished if, for reasons beyond their control, they do not have the appropriate brain circuitry to process moral dilemmas?" asks researcher Adrian Raine of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

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Okay, let me think about this for a moment. Um... YES!!! Unless researcher Adrian Raine is willing to take all of those poor unwitting victims into his home instead of releasing them in MY neighborhood.

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That is the absolute question that needs to be put to all crook lovers and those who would empty our prisons. I'll go ahead and commit Ms. Raine to accept at least ten felons in her home.

quote:

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Originally posted by Gordon LeMaire:

quote:

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"It's the part of the brain that says, 'Hey, hold on a minute.' "

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I thought that was the little guy (girl) that sits on your shoulder saying, "Don't do it. You'll hate yourself in the morning." When the other one is saying "Go ahead. Ya know ya want to."

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Freud, or at least my college abnormal psych prof who as an MD, said that a person like this "doesn't have a lid on their id". Nowadays, they would use fancy terms like "filter", as in, they have no filter for their behavior.

If such things can be clinically determined, wouldn't it be relevant in determining future dangerousness? How about eligibility for community supervision?

This seems a whole lot like phrenology to me.

Phrenology is a theory which claims to be able to determine character, personality traits and criminality on the basis of the shape of the head (i.e., by reading "bumps" and "fissures"). Developed by German physician Franz Joseph Gall around 1800, the discipline was very popular in the 19th century. In 1843, Francois Magendie referred to phrenology as "a pseudo-science of the present day" Phrenology thinking was, however, influential in 19th century psychiatry and modern neuroscience. Phrenology is based on the concept that the brain is the organ of the mind, and that certain brain areas have localized, specific functions (see in particular, Brodmann's areas) or modules (see modularity of mind). In other words, phrenologists believed that the mind has a set of different mental faculties, with each particular faculty represented in a different portion (or organ) of the brain. These areas were said to be proportional to a given individual's propensities and the importance of a given mental faculty, as well as the overall conformation of the cranial bone to reflect differences among individuals.

[I wish the new TDCAA website had the ability to make tidbits like this "pop up" when the cursor goes across a word. It would be the equivalent of watching MTV with "pop-ups."]