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George Zimmerman, the mugshot
Cross posted from Frederick Leatherman Law Blog.
The Sanford Police Department concluded that George Zimmerman passed a voice stress analysis test, which is a type of polygraph test.
How much credence should we place on the result and will it be admissible in court?
Although police routinely use polygraph tests when questioning a suspect in order to confront the suspect, if the test indicates he is attempting deception while responding to a question, the United States Supreme Court and many other state supreme courts have held that polygraph test results are not admissible in court because they are not sufficiently accurate and reliable.
For background information on polygraph testing, go here.
Florida excludes polygraph test results. Therefore, the results of Zimmerman’s test will not be admissible at Zimmerman’s trial.
Nevertheless, many members of the public now know that he passed a polygraph test, so let us take a look at his test and see what conclusions we can draw about it.
Yamiche Alcindor and Marisol Bello reporting for USA Today said:
Zimmerman was asked nine questions, including two related directly to the shooting: “Did you confront the guy you shot?” the tester asked. “No,” Zimmerman responded. “Were you in fear for your life, when you shot the guy?” the tester asked. “Yes,” Zimmerman said. The examiner concluded that Zimmerman “told substantially the complete truth.”
Ron Grenier, a former FBI agent and lie detector expert, said the voice stress analysis test is not as reliable as a polygraph test. Also, he said, it’s unclear what the examiner meant by “confront.” Further, such tests don’t measure a person’s state of mind or fear at some other time, he added.
“He may have convinced himself that he was in fear of his life, but whether or not he was is not definitive,” Grenier said.
Zimmerman’s responses would be more meaningful, he said, if he had been asked, ” ‘Did Trayvon Martin attack you and knock you to the ground?’ Or ‘Was Trayvon Martin on top of you hitting you before you shot him?’ ”
Joe Navarro, a former FBI agent who teaches interviewing techniques at Saint Leo University, agreed. “You have to ask precise questions,” he said. “You want to know at what point you feared for your life.”
I agree with Ron Grenier’s criticism that the question, “Did you confront the guy you shot?” is an improper question.
The question is vague because it is too subjective to be of any use in determining whether GZ followed TM and was the aggressor. Note that the legal test for self-defense depends on the objective circumstances of the encounter between GZ and TM and whether a reasonable person in that situation would have concluded that it was necessary to use deadly force to prevent imminent death or grievous bodily harm.
A confrontation can be verbal or physical and GZ may have believed or convinced himself, without any rational basis for doing so, that TM’s presence in the neighborhood and his attempt to elude GZ justified GZ in attempting to prevent him from getting away. Therefore, GZ might have perceived any resistance by TM as a confrontation, even if TM were merely standing his ground and using force to defend himself.
Similarly, the test result does not help us decide if GZ was the aggressor.
I also agree that the question, “Were you in fear for your life, when you shot the guy?” is improper because whether he was in fear of losing his life when he shot and killed TM does not help us determine if a reasonable person in his situation would have been in fear of losing his life.
The test result is basically useless because to decide this case the ultimate finder of fact will have to decide what each person did and whether a reasonable person in GZ’s situation would have done what he did.
Finally, even if proper questions had been asked, there are any number of examples of guilty people who passed polygraph tests. One person with whom I am familiar is my former client Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer, who passed a polygraph in 1987 when he denied being the Green River Killer. He was released and continued killing until he was arrested in the fall of 2000, after DNA test results implicated him in several homicides.
Due to their proven inaccuracy and lack of reliability, I do not support using polygraph tests for any purpose and I think police departments and all employers should be prohibited from using them.
71 Comments
Now, now, don’t be hasty as tool of scientific analysis and investigation they’re at least as reliable as phrenology.
mfi
Heh.
That brought a smile to my face.
:-)
was it not a voice stress test and not a polygraph? the former being even more unreliable.
and osteomancy
lol
Yes, it was a voice-stress analysis test, but that is a type of polygraph test, and, yes, it is less reliable and accurate than the standard polygraph test.
thank you
“I did not have sex with that women !”
ooopsss…sorry…wrong case….never mind.
Why don’t we look at this entire episode in the most fundamental way possible. If it had been a black male who had killed a white kid in exactly the same circumstances, what do you suppose the outcome would have been?
Racist hate crimes have never stopped. They’ve simply been sterilised by our glorious mainstream media. If you consider the prison population in this country and how it came to be so lopsided, you begin to understand that racism, like so many forms of prejudice practiced by so many exceptional americans, is alive and well, in fact flourishing with the blessing of our rulers, many of whom are closet racists themselves, here in the land of freedom and equality.
In some perverse sense, the stealth racism, which is no less vicious, that exists in this country today is worse than the overt, in-your-face brand of the past. At least back then, you generally knew what and who you had to deal with.
Some how, some way I’ll bet this scum will walk, or be given a token slap on the wrist, just like uncounted numbers of psycho cops who have harassed, threatened, molested, beaten and even killed totally innocent men and women, simply because they could, and gotten away unscathed.
“A society whose citizens refuse to see and investigate the facts, who refuse to believe that their government and their media will routinely lie to them and fabricate a reality contrary to verifiable facts, is a society that chooses and deserves the Police State Dictatorship it’s going to get.”
Ian Williams Goddard
There is only one race, the human race. What about this do we not understand?
I have been shocked and dismayed by the willingness of so many people, who would no doubt describe themselves as intelligent, open minded and most assuredly not racist, who have nevertheless swallowed hook, line and sinker GZ’s claim that, after eluding him successfully, TM suddenly and for no apparent reason and without any weapon attacked and tried to kill him with his bare hands while uttering B-movie phrases like, “One of us is going to die tonight.”
If TM had been Caucasian, I doubt many people would have believed GZ’s story, but because he was Black the story suddenly made sense to them.
I call that racism.
Yeah, my blood’s so mad feels like coagulatin’
I’m sitting here just contemplatin’
I can’t twist the truth, it knows no regulation.
Handful of senators don’t pass legislation
And marches alone can’t bring integration
When human respect is disintegratin’
This whole crazy world is just too frustratin’
And you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
Ah, you don’t believe
We’re on the eve
of destruction.
It’s hard for me to accept that anyone really believes GZ’s story.
Good point.
Yep.
Sure feels that way.
Actually, Voice Stress Analysis is not technically a type polygraphy.
While polygraph measures and records multiple physiological responses to stress, such as blood pressure, pulse, respiration, and skin conductivity during the examination, a VSA examination measures and records a single response, inaudible micro tremors in the voice.
The word polygraph comes from the Greek, polýgraphos, many-writing, and describes the function of the machine that records/graphs the multiple physiological responses used in the technique.
I suspect that the usefulness of polygraph, VSA and its cousin VLA (Voice Layered Analysis) lies principally in its profitability to the manufacturers of the devices, and practitioners.
Thanks, I think I should have said it was a type of lie detector test rather than polygraph test.
Yes, I agree that its usefulness depends on its profitability, not accuracy.
I’m not in the least surprised that Zimmerman can beat a voice stress analysis. It’s not all that uncommon for a sociopath to defeat “lie detector” technology. That’s only one reason why such results can’t be trusted.
Fascinating read, as always, and rec’d. Thank you for walking us through all this ‘behind the scenes’ legal stuff. I love seeing how the justice system really works (as opposed to on teevee). The story of your client the Green River Killer passing the polygraph is particularly interesting. It is difficult to be in the position of judging our fellow men, IIRC it was EChan who said she’d never do jury duty b/c she couldn’t put herself in that position. But as your client demonstrated, *someone* has got to find and stop killers or they may kill again.
I love seeing the thoughtfulness of law done properly. It is clear that the judicial process has taken a long time to evolve and, although foar from perfect, how much effort is taken to balance the rights of the accused and the rights of society. Makes it more shocking when the precedents and procedures are ignored.
Your comment reminds me of a story I heard about a small town police department in eastern Washington State that could not afford a polygraph, so they used colander connected to several wires by alligator clips.
The wires weren’t connected to a machine. The ends just dangled loosely inside a shut drawer in a detective’s desk.
He fit the colander on a suspect’s head and every time he got an answer he didn’t believe, he told the suspect the machine said he was lying.
Got a lot of confessions that way for a whole lot less money.
That’s a great story, Mason.
BTW, did you know you are front-paged. Right Now. Saturday Night.
Dude.
“Were you in fear for your life, when you shot the guy?” the tester asked.
Also, the way this question is phrased seems very Leading to me.
Who’s going to answer, No, I just felt like shooting him?
i don’t necessarily disbelieve the guy– just wanna see what happens at the trial
…No, I just felt like shooting him?
Excellent point, demi…! ;-)
Dang, talk about your epu’d…! *sigh*
These were obviously weak questions, so the test was bungled. Any good lawyer could do better than that. Why wasn’t the DA tasked with preparing or at least reviewing the questions? Even though the results will be inadmissible as evidence, at least there was an opportunity to learn whether or not in a controlled environment the suspect’s story appeared to be fabricated. I would even suggest letting GZ freely tell his story while being monitored, to see if he might start sweating over certain of his allegations.
This is such a terrible wrong that has been done, and it’s hard to see how a court could determine guilt or innocence with minimal evidence. I hope this case will bring Floridians to their senses with regard to repealing the “Stand Your Ground” law.
here’s a one up
let’s use THIS circumstance, let’s say zimmerman lay dead and martin claimed “stand your ground”
this would in fact be the facts, yet there is no question in my mind the “stand your ground” law would not even be considered and martin would not only be arrested for trial, easily convicted
While I know it’s legally important to determine GZ’s “state of mind” during the incident, I think that’s next to impossible. The passage of time causes subtle changes in memory,and the mind rationalizes previous actions. It may be a problem in the courtroom, but I submit that nobody will ever know what was going through his head at the time- possibly including him.
Maybe I missed something.
Looking for info on who paid for the test and requested it. Then, connect the dots.
If it’s inadmissible, what’s the point? Oohing and Aahing for the public at large? Maybe there’s an expectation that some eventual jurors will know about it, even though technically they can’t consider it.
Especially not in Sanford, FL.
No electricity used. Green!
Must be an Energy Star rated contraption.
“In some perverse sense, the stealth racism, which is no less vicious, that exists in this country today is worse than the overt, in-your-face brand of the past. At least back then, you generally knew what and who you had to deal with.”
Reminds me of “stealth Republicans” also known as “Democrats” that are helping run this country (wish I knew how to slash through that last word),er, world into the toilet.
Polygraph tests are inadmissible in court. The notion of a “lie detector” is an urban legebnd.
This entire exercise is PR designed to allow a racist murderer to walk.
Great story, and an illustration of the direction that pseudoscience always seems to go.
By which I mean to ask, how many times has the colander ‘proved’ anyone innocent?
One of the most annoying, and shameful parts of the whole ‘Homeland Security’ meme is the vast universe of waste and fraud that suddenly opened up for every kind of bogus, but connected, high-tech charlatan to sell goods and services to our government.
There are a lot of ‘colanders’ being purchased now, and we’re not getting the low low price at Wal-Mart, I’ll guarantee you that.
Sadly this is a designed in feature and not a bug.
Just as the vast amount of waste fraud and attempted theft of resources was a feature and not a bug of the war against Irak.
Source: Paul Bremer to Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce Meeting, February 23 2003
mfi
This being necessary because those rag-headed bastards refuse to co-operate any longer in running it for us.
Imagine the nerve of these people, insisting that they will no longer tolerate theft by proxy, and that if we want to continue to steal their country’s resources we must do it openly.
I fail to see how the American military can avoid the same fate as the British and the Russian armies before them.
Hey masoninblue one little query:
Are there to the best of your knowledge any verified instances where anyone beat a polygraph?
That’s what gave the game away.
After the 1991-2 invasion, Irak — which not only had to cope with the effects of that war, but the effects of the long war with Iran, a war the US actively encouraged because the first-world crowd running Europe and North America (and Saudi Arabia) all privately agreed it was best to keep two potential entrants to the First-World Club at each other’s throats — did a pretty good job of cleaning itself up, all by itself, with its own architects and electricians and construction companies and the like.
The College Republicans Paul Bremer chose to run Irak as part of the CPA didn’t do much of anything besides screw as many people as they could, both Iraki citizens and US taxpayers, in the spare time they had left over from plotting political mischief against their foes back home.
Yes, this one from up top in my article:
He subsequently pleaded guilty to the murders he had denied committing when he passed the polygraph.
He mentions one right in the post:
Call me a dreamer, but I’ve never understood the infatuation with conquering and subjugating anyone, let alone the world.
A military force cannot be everywhere at once and it is not trained, equipped, or disposed to govern wisely. Sooner or later it will defeat itself and vanish into the sands of time.
Thanks.
Thanks..
The results were released by the prosecution and the defense released a video of the test, IIRC.
Unlike the rest of the country, Florida releases the discovery (police investigation) to the public in criminal cases at the same time it turns it over to the defense.
I would not say it’s “next to impossible” because we can and do infer a person’s intent and state of mind from the acts they commit.
Hence, the well known legal principle that, absent evidence to the contrary, a person intends the natural and probable consequences of their acts.
A prosecutor is not trained or equipped to operate a polygraph test and the test, even if properly administered to a suspect is not capable of providing accurate and reliable results. The error rate is unacceptably high.
This is why I do not believe we should be using this technology in investigations of any kind or to consider in deciding whom to hire and whom to fire.
Thanks to the editor for main paging my article.
Much appreciated.
ALL polygraph tests are unreliable and useless. This is not even debatable.
That’s because you don’t love the accumulation of money above all other things.
The average person cannot imagine the depth of avarice embodied in our ruling class.
Couple our own lack of imagination with our ruler’s love, and mastery of secrecy and you have most of the recipe for unfettered evil.
By the way Mason, the whole issue of the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin case highlights the public’s reluctance to understand, and honestly face the reality that an ignorant racist might carry a gun and profess to protect his fellow man, all the while harboring an overwhelming and murderous enmity.
Their avarice seems pointless, stupid and self-destructive to me.
I cannot help but conclude that the case is functioning like a giant mirror exposing the vast ugliness of racism in our society and putting the lie to the claim that we are living in a post-racial society.
Amen to that, Margaret.
…so let us take a look at his test and see what conclusions we can draw about it.
You can draw the same supportable conclusions that you can draw from any other unsupported pseudo-science: None
on the subject of criminality and race in America, I submit for your erudition, a one hour conversation between Bill Moyers and professor Khalil Gibran Muhammad. The quite serious tete-a-tete is so informative that it is delightful. I implore you to watch the whole hour and not judge the direction of the conversation from its mundane beginning, it reaches dissertation levels as it progresses.
Confronting the Contradictions of America’s Past
June 29, 2012
Bill and discuss what we should learn from our racial past to better understand the present.
it is a video by the way
I have said this exact thing while on huffpo
Agreed.
Thanks, I’ll watch it.
you may want to take a gander at the evidence again
we don’t need to know what he was thinking
we need to know that he did it and forensically that he could not do it in self-defense
Gilbreath laid it out at the first bond hearing
“We have Mr. Zimmerman’s statements, we have the shell casings and we had Mr. Martin’s body. ”
A pleasure as always
you guys need to get out of my head
I previously used the tsa scanners as an example of how crony capitalism led voice stress tests to become a “thing”
indeed
I for one am hoping that we find ourselves more and more ‘in each other’s heads’ as our collective consciousness grows towards true understanding.
And yes, the TSA scanners are a perfect example of crony capitalism.
I believe the primary purpose of the Department of Homeland Security is to keep playing the fear card in all of its permutations and combinations so that we do not get in each other’s heads. Instead, the department will promote fear so that we suspect and do not trust each other.
If I were elected president (fat chance, right?), I would abolish DSH.
There was a time when I would have agreed with you wholeheartedly. Or rather I would have agreed wholeheartedly with the lawyers and experts on jurisprudence who say so. A lifetime spent in the Middle East has caused me to rethink this. Jews and Muslims alike are orthopraxic – they are interested in what people do rather than in they think, feel, or believe. The question that a middle-eastern lawyer will ask about “state of mind” is this:
If the answer to that question is “yes”. Then the accused is innocent if the answer is “no” then they have to face the consequences of their acts and cannot hide behind “state of mind” even in mitigaton. I’ve come to the conclusion that in this respect at least the courts throughout the Middle East have a better grasp of essentials than is to be found in the USA and other western jurisdictions.
mfi
DHS is part of the MIC imperative of ever-increasing investment in the business of preparing for and making war, which has been expanded to include controlling the domestic population (us) that might try to deter this.
Sorry, wrong story. Something got mixed up in my Browser.
Here are some definitions. In Florida second degree murder is defined as the unlawful killing of a human being when perpetrated by any act imminently dangerous to another and evincing a depraved mind regardless of human life, although without any premeditated design to effect the death of any particular individual.
A person evinces a depraved mind when he engages in imminently dangerous conduct with no regard for the life of another person.
Imminently dangerous conduct means conduct that creates what a reasonable person would realize as an immediate and extremely high degree of risk of death to another person.
The Florida jury instruction for second degree murder (Fla. Std. Jury Instr. (Crim.) 7.4) provides that an act is imminently dangerous to another and demonstrating a depraved mind if it is one that
1. A person of ordinary judgment would know is reasonably certain to kill or do serious bodily injury to another and
2. Is done from ill will, hatred, spite, or an evil intent and
3. Is of such a nature that the act itself indicates an indifference to human life.
seems to describe to a T scaring the crap out of a teenager, chasing them down unidentifiable and in the dark with a gun and addressing them aggressively.
sorry was too tired to punctuate or make sense
seems to describe to a T the acts of:
1.scaring the crap out of a teenager, then
2.chasing them down unidentified and unidentifiable
3.in the dark with a gun, then
4.addressing them aggressively upon encounter