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Detective Jeremy Merola has been conducting polygraph examinations with the Syracuse Police Department for 13 years. Last year, Merola conducted 24 polygraph tests for the department. Each test can take up to four hours.

Polygraphs, colloquially referred to as lie detectors, measure physiological changes in a person while answering a series of “yes” or “no” questions, Merola said. Christian Hart, a professor and the director of the master’s in psychological science program at Texas Woman’s University, said the tests specifically measure heart rate, respiration and galvanic skin response.

Syracuse Mayor Ben Walsh, as a part of his proposed city budget for fiscal year 2023, released “Activity Indicators” for SPD among other departments throughout the city. In 2020/21 the department conducted 84 polygraph investigations, the lowest number under Walsh’s administration.

In 2018/19, polygraph investigations peaked during the Walsh administration, totaling 114.

Today, polygraphs are not admissible in court but can be used throughout the investigation process. Most private employers are banned from using polygraph tests for pre-employment screening or during employment due to the Employee Polygraph Protection act passed in 1988.

Public employers such as SPD, however, still have the ability to run pre-employment polygraph testing on potential employees. Of the 24 tests Merola ran last year, he said 90% were pre-employment screening.

Merola said 60% of the polygraphs the police department conducts overall are for pre-employment screening. The remaining tests were specific to criminal investigations.

Organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union have previously taken issue with the legitimacy of polygraph testing. In 2018, ACLU Senior Policy Analyst Jay Stanley wrote that polygraph testing is “pseudo-scientific.”

“You look at the internet, they say this thing is hocus pocus,” Merola said. “And if I didn’t go through the course, and I didn’t have some of the significant polygraphs that I did, I wouldn’t believe in it, or at least have less of a belief in it than I do.”

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The ACLU has officially opposed the use of lie detectors since the 1950s.

Citing a 2003 study from the National Academy of Sciences, Hart said that polygraphs were “far less accurate than the polygraphs examiners have claimed.” In the same article, Hart said some scientists have found the accuracy of polygraphs are closer to 75%.

“So just by using a coin flip, you’re (at) 50% accuracy,” he said. “So 75%, it’s certainly considerably better than chance levels, but it’s nowhere near the perfection we would hope to see if a tool was used to make serious decisions about people’s lives.”

Merola said polygraph examinations are only used as pieces of larger investigations. He called them just another tool in the toolbox.

SPD typically requires investigators to exhaust all options before using a polygraph, he said. It would be “dumb,” Merola said, to use a polygraph toward the beginning of an investigation.

“(A polygraph) doesn’t ever replace a good investigation,” Merola said.

Merola argued that one of the largest factors in the accuracy of a single polygraph test is the skill of whoever is running the test.

“If someone were to say to me, ‘Would you take a polygraph test?’ the first thing I would ask them is ‘Who’s doing the test?’” he said.

The human element of the test, Merola said, reduces the overall accuracy and validity of polygraphs.

A study published by WIRED in 2018 found that this human element can have dire consequences, finding that Black people “failed” polygraph tests at a disproportionate level. Mike Harris, a contributing writer at WIRED, wrote that since a polygraph only records raw data, it is up to the examiner to interpret the data themselves.

From this interpretation, the examiner will draw their conclusion.

“I doubt anyone knows just how much leeway such ‘craft’ has left for racial bias and other injustices, but I shudder to think about it,” Stanley wrote for the ACLU.

The type of techniques used can also impact the accuracy of the testing, Merola said. The more variability in the type of question being asked, he said, the greater chance the test will fail. SPD will typically stick to a single issue while testing, he said.

“Somebody will come to us and say, ‘I want you to test them on this, this and this,’ and we turn them away,” Merola said. “We’ll say, ‘Pick one thing that you want us to test them on, and we’ll stick to them’ because we want to come in as accurate as we can.”

Hart also said polygraph exams have issues outside of their accuracy. The tests, he said, can be beaten.

He said polygraphs hinge on the idea that when people are lying, there is a physiological change, an emotional response to guilt or fear that comes from lying. Though, Hart said, that’s not necessarily true.

“Not everyone feels fearful when they’re questioned about their bad deeds,” he said.

Hindrances to the accuracy of polygraphs, or “countermeasures” as Hart calls them, can be more purposeful. Simple actions such as counting backwards by seven can elicit the same response as lying, Hart said.

If an examinee were to use this tactic while going through basic questions, they could establish lying as the baseline for the rest of the test, he continued.

Merola said he has used polygraphs for a wide variety of purposes during his career.

“We’ve released people from prison based off the polygraph,” he said. “(There have been) some pretty good cases that were centered around, or at least highlighting, the use of the polygraph.”

Published on May 2, 2022 at 1:28 am

Contact Kyle: kschouin@syr.edu | @Kyle_Chouinard