Last week, Sahil Sharma, a law student at New York’s Touro college, was acquitted after being charged with sexually assaulting a family friend at a Cuyahoga Falls wedding. The case was unusual because Sharma had gone through – and passed – three polygraph tests. The American Polygraph Association asserts that there’s only a 1-in-1000 chance that all three tests could have come out falsely. The state, which never was much interested in things like “facts,” proceeded in pressing charges against the 25-year-old anyway.
The case took three days to try, and Sharma had to wait four more for the decision. “I was on pins and needles,” he says. “ Everything was on the line.” When the judge declared Sharma not guilty, he burst out crying.
Not coincidentally, Sharma is now applying to criminal defense offices in New York. The experience of being a defendant has changed his life, he says: “You don’t realize how great every moment is until everything can possibly be taken away from you.” — Rebecca Meiser
This article appears in Aug 22-28, 2007.
Questions of Sahil Sharma’s guilt or innocence aside (I make no judgement), the notion that the odds of three consecutive polygraph examinations being wrong are 1-in-1,000 is erroneous. There is broad consensus amongst scientists that polygraphy has no scientific basis at all.
AntiPolygraph.org has obtained copies of the pretrial polygraph testimony, as well as video of the polygraph examination that was admitted into evidence in this case. For downloadable links, as well as a critique, following the link associated with my name in this post.
George Maschke, who left a comment here, failed an FBI employment polygraph and moved to the Netherlands, from where he wages an amoral campaign against polygraph. He indiscriminately tries to help sex offenders, police applicants, or anyone else, fake their way through polygraph exams, and he has now posted a video that discloses to Google users an alleged sex victim’s identity. There seems to be no limit to what he will do out of spite.
Frank Speeker,
You are not pointing out any deep dark secret by mentioning that I failed an FBI employment polygraph. I’ve spoken about it with the Washington Post and CBS 60 Minutes II. Any who are interested may read my statement, “Too Hot of a Potato: A Citizen-Soldier’s Encounter With the Polygraph”:
http://antipolygraph.org/statements/statement-003.shtml
It is true that AntiPolygraph.org makes information about how to pass a polygraph test (whether or not one is telling the truth) freely available to the public. We provide this information to give truthful persons a means of protecting themselves against the very serious risk of a false positive outcome. Unfortunately, we cannot provide this information to those who legitimately need it without also making it available to everyone. Regarding the contention that doing so is “amoral,” see my “Response to Paul M. Menges Regarding the Ethical Considerations of Providing Polygraph Countermeasures to the Public”:
http://antipolygraph.org/articles/article-029.shtml
Regarding the disclosure of an alleged rape victim’s identity, note that this was first disclosed in print by Cleve Scene and later by the Akron Beacon Journal.
Can you point to anything I’ve said or written about polygraph matters that is demonstrably false? If so, please enlighten us.