Word: lie-detector
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...fact, Byrd was totally innocent: his accusers had pocketed their employer's cash; they admitted their crime after flunking a lie-detector test given by the oil company. After they made up the loss, the company filed no charges, and no one notified the police. Byrd, unable to make bail, stayed in jail for almost six months, vainly pleading for a session with a lie-detector test himself. Not until last Jan. 31 did the prosecutor finally permit the test, which the truck driver passed with flying colors; not until last month did the police finally erase Byrd...
Conceding that "this sort of thing is embarrassing," Fort Worth's top police announced a new policy: lie-detector tests for any suspect who requests one. Texas Attorney General Waggoner Carr suggested that the same policy may be advisable throughout the state. Amid all the good intentions, though, no one paid much heed to the hazards, notably the possibility of testing error and the fact that from now on, police may well assume the guilt of suspects who refuse the tests...
...wrong three out of ten times. But no one really knows. A bad polygrapher can easily misread emotionally disturbed subjects, a suspect who, contrary to good polygraph policy, has been subjected to extended questioning just before testing, or even a badly frightened innocent. No American court yet admits lie-detector evidence without agreement providing for its admission...
Complete Misnomer. As a result of such congressional blasts, the polygraph-happy Defense Department now reminds subjects of their Fifth Amendment right to silence and requires their written consent before using the lie box. In private industry, labor arbitrators usually bar firing when evidence of wrongdoing is based solely on lie-detector tests or refusal to take them. New laws also forbid the tests as a condition of employment in six states (Alaska, California, Massachusetts, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington). J. Edgar Hoover calls the name lie detector "a complete misnomer" because the gaugers are totally incapable of "absolute judgments...
Simmons, who was left behind to try to prove his innocence, had two Mexican lawyers, neither of whom spoke enough English to communicate with their bewildered client, one of whom is now a fugitive facing embezzlement charges. Though the defendant voluntarily took two lie-detector tests, which are sometimes admissible in Mexican courts, the inconclusive results were ignored. The murder gun was never found; a clear tire mark at the scene did not match Simmons' tires; hundreds of curiosity seekers obliterated all fingerprints on the death car before police thought of checking it for fingerprints...