Word: polygraph
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...graduated without honors because he refused to join the Law Review. Instead, he spent 60 hours a week running his own detective agency, which handled 2,000 cases for criminal lawyers while teaching Bailey his key skill-indefatigable investigation. After law school, Bailey attended Chicago's Keeler Polygraph Institute, then helped an elderly Boston lawyer defend an accused wife killer who had flunked a lie-detector test. Bailey was hired merely to cross-examine the prosecution polygrapher. But during the trial, his boss, 72, collapsed of a heart attack. Bailey, then 27, took over and won the case. After...
...truck driver passed with flying colors; not until last month did the police finally erase Byrd's "criminal record." Byrd himself must now erase the $8,000 in debts that his wife and four children racked up during their breadwinner's absence. Because of his experience, the polygraph, or "lie box," has suddenly achieved new popularity in Texas...
...Error. In a country that is short on police and long on curbs against interrogation, better scientific crime detection seems an absolute necessity-all of which encourages makers of polygraphs, which cost anywhere from $675 to $2,650. Polygraph theorists maintain that lying causes physical reactions detectable by a trained polygrapher. While he asks questions, ranging from the pertinent to the impertinent, the gadget graphically records the subject's pulse, blood pressure, respiration, and perspiration flow. The obvious weakness is not the machine but the man who interprets it. One study found that a good polygrapher is wrong three...
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...
...pioneered. His stiff rules of conduct are now standardized as a code of ethics for police across the country. His department was the first to use blood, fiber and soil analysis in detection (1907); the first to use the lie detector (a Berkeley cop collaborated in inventing the polygraph in 1921); it was an early developer of a fingerprint classification system (1924) and the first to use radio-equipped squad cars...