Law Enforcement Increasingly Switching To Newer and More Accurate Technology
LEWES, Del., March 4, 2014 /PRNewswire/ — According to the National Association of Computer Voice Stress Analysts (NACVSA), the polygraph's 60 years of dominance as the primary investigative tool to detect deception is drawing to a close. This is based largely on the recent publication of a peer-reviewed study by renowned criminologist, Professor James Chapman, in the scientific journal "Criminalistics and Court Expertise" which validated the accuracy of the Computer Voice Stress Analyzer® (CVSA) to be greater than 95%. Currently only those aligned with the US federal polygraph community and a dwindling number of private investigators continue to use the antiquated polygraph technology.
In his explosive book The Clapper Memo, investigative journalist Bob McCarty documents the extensive lengths to which the Department of Defense Polygraph Institute (now called the Credibility Assessment Institute) has gone to discredit the more accurate and less expensive CVSA. McCarty has written extensively on the topic of polygraph and vetting failures leading to preventable "insider attacks" against US military members by Afghani nationals.
One of the more than 2,000 agencies that have made the switch to the CVSA is the Citrus County Sheriff's Office, Florida. In the very first days of the Jessica Lunsford abduction and murder case, Jessica's father became a suspect. According to retired Citrus County Sheriff's Lt. David Wyllie, then the head of the Special Victims Unit, he requested Jessica's father take a CVSA examination shortly after her disappearance. Jessica's father agreed, and the CVSA cleared him as a suspect. However, investigators from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE), a polygraph hold-out organization, decided to conduct a polygraph of the father. The FDLE polygraph results directly contradicted the CVSA results and showed Jessica's father to be "Deceptive" regarding the same issues for which the CVSA examination had cleared him.
FBI investigators on the Jessica Lunsford Task Force then requested the father be tested AGAIN by an FBI polygraph examiner. Jessica's father agreed and took an FBI administered polygraph, which was determined to be "Inconclusive" – meaning the polygraph examination was of no investigative value.
Based on the conflicting results between the CVSA and the polygraph examinations, Jessica's father was considered 'a person of interest' until the killer, John Couey, was caught and confessed to Jessica's abduction and brutal murder. In the end, the CVSA results were correct and both the FDLE and FBI polygraph tests were wrong. This is one of many such cases where the CVSA proved its accuracy over the old polygraph. Fortunately, the error-prone polygraph has recently come under intense scrutiny after US whistleblower Edward Snowden passed multiple polygraphs before defecting from the US with a treasure trove of top secret documents. Many in the federal government have stated the Snowden case is the beginning of the end of the federal polygraph program.
With major US law enforcement agencies such as those in Atlanta, New Orleans, Nashville, Baltimore, Miami, the California Highway Patrol, as well as the US Federal Courts now depending upon the CVSA as an investigative tool for both criminal cases and to screen police applicants, it appears as though polygraph's days are numbered.
For more information about the CVSA please visit CVSA1.com, NACVSA.org or contact Lt. Kenneth Merchant at 888-358-5025 or email.