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ACTS MAY BE SCIENTIFICALLY DETECTABLE, BUT INTENTIONS ARE NOT

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Published online at: http://www.antipolygraph.org/


Intentions_not06.doc


ACTS MAY BE SCIENTIFICALLY DETECTABLE

BUT INTENTIONS ARE NOT


Even supporters of the (CQT) polygraph like David Raskin and the polygraphic texts themselves admit that only guilty acts, and not intentions, can be detected. So variants of the Guilty Knowledge Test (GKT) or Concealed Information Test (CIT) which are scientific ways of detecting guilt (for distinction between CQT and GKT see first two sections of http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/~furedy/polygraph.htm), are nevertheless only appropriate for detecting an act (e.g., did X have intercourse within Y) and not an intention (e.g., did X think that the intercourse was voluntary).


Accordingly, even if the CQT were scientifically based (which it’s not), it is completely inappropriate to use it to determine the length of a sentence after someone has already been found to be guilty, because that determination involves intentions and not acts.


However, in actual practice, like snake oil, the CQT polygraph is attributed the magical power of detecting not only the acts, but also intentions. And of course with crimes that have no source of independent evidence (the “she said he said variety), the polygraph, in the superstition-ridden North American culture, has expanded its range of accepted application, just as snake oil was considered to be good for all ills.


But whereas snake oil was intended by its practitioners to be a cure for disease, the CQT polygraph examiner is not really interested in detecting deception (or guilt) at all, but is rather motivated to elicit a confession of guilt, whether that confession is true or false. So the polygraph serves simply as a prop for interrogation, and not for detecting deception or guilt (http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/~furedy/Papers/ld/lie_prop.htm).


Finally, the confusion between the CQT’s use for detecting guilty acts and guilty intentions has been around for a while. My first encounter (1982) with the act use of the polygraph. As detailed in http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/~furedy/Papers/ld/Cconfess.doc (see R. v. Lottman), the CQT polygrapher had convinced the police that a driver of a get-away car was guilty of murder on the grounds that the robber killed a store owner (an act) and that the polygraph “showed” that the driver was an accomplice in the murder rather than just the robber (an intention). Note how a GKT could only be employed to investigate whether the robber had committed the murder, but not whether the driver intended this murder, and not just the robbery, to occur.

So while the distinction between acts and intentions may seem rather academic and esoteric, the distinction has important practical implications for a genuinely scientific and rational evaluation of the psychophysiological detection of guilt.


All the best, John


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