The Lie Detectors (19 page)

The defense struggled in vain to impugn this scientific testimony, arguing that any piece of wire or tape from the same manufacturer would have been similar. But without its own experts—or access to the physical evidence—the defense could not cast doubt on the specificity of the similarities. Besides, the defense attorney was in a drunken stupor throughout the trial. Ostensibly, all this evidence was meant to corroborate the accusations of the defendant’s roommate, Peter Benetti, a twenty-four-year-old ex-convict who had been granted immunity in exchange for his testimony. In practice, the honest witnesses were shreds of tape and broken wire. "Oh, Pete Benetti can lie," summarized the prosecutor, "Bobbie Robertson can too, and so can Mitch McDonald, but those can’t lie….They speak for themselves and say, ‘IMitch, and I, Bobbie, and I, Pete—we made that thing.’"

Res ipsa loquitur,
as the law says: the thing speaks for itself—thereby eliding the seven months that Nard and his fellow experts had labored to coax those accusatory cries from the torn fabric of the first-aid tape, severed fishing line, and mangled copper wire, not to mention the years of training that had gone into learning how to make these wounds in the world sing in unison. No, whatever else the forensic sciences may accomplish, they do not make things speak for themselves. Yet amid the silence of the defense, the expert testimony spoke loud and clear.

The jury of local farmers took an hour and a half to reach a verdict of guilty, and Judge Hill sentenced the men to twenty-five years. Thanks to science, proclaimed the local paper, the "reign of terror" was over. As for the team from Northwestern, their victory paid dividends, starting with an "anonymous" gift of optical equipment and $1,000 from the mine manager, who took Nard, Kay, Charlie, and Jane in his personal railroad car to Cheyenne, where Kay rode in the Frontier Days rodeo.

Then, a year later, Keeler achieved the breakthrough so far denied him: he formally presented results from his lie detector to a jury. Yet the case also set a limit on the machine’s acceptability. Ever since seeing Keeler demonstrate his technique, Judge Clayton F. Van Pelt of Portage, Wisconsin had been on the lookout for a trial that might showcase the lie detector. Tony Grignano and Cecil Loniello were charged with fleeing a pharmacy holdup in which a cop had been killed. They had much to fear from a jury, and the prosecution must have known that two of its own witnesses were perjurers. Hence, Van Pelt was able to secure an agreement in advance from both the prosecution and the defense that they would allow Keeler to testify to the jury, no matter how his test came out. On February 7, 1935, the prosecution called Keeler to the stand, and for three hours he explained that the two young men had been untruthful, that his technique was 75 percent effective, and that his results ought not to be the sole basis for conviction. According to the judge’s private survey, the jurors found the lie detector offered "corroborative evidence in connection with other facts proved," and they voted to convict.

Modest on the witness stand, Keeler was less bashful afterward in the press. "It means that the findings of the lie detector are as acceptable in court as fingerprint testimony." This statement was a whopper, but thenKeeler was always willing to read similarities and differences to his advantage. The case did, however, set a legal precedent: prior stipulation remains the sole basis for accepting the polygraph tests in most criminal courts.

The
Frye
ruling of 1923 had declared that before scientific evidence could be heard in court it had to be based on science that was "sufficiently established to have gained general acceptance in the particular field in which it belongs." This begged the question of who constituted the relevant experts. Polygraph examiners claimed this mantle for the science of lie detection, and argued that the polygraph had proved itself 90 to 100 percent reliable in hundreds of laboratory studies. But the courts instead looked to academic psychologists, who pronounced themselves skeptical of its merits in surveys in 1926 and again in 1952.

During this same period, however, the judiciary invoked the same Frye rule to admit many other forensic sciences treated with considerable skepticism outside the immediate circle of practitioners: handwriting analysis, ballistic identification, and forensic psychology, to name a few. The lie detector alone has been banned. As several judges have hinted, the courts rejected the lie detector not for its failings but for its power—what one court called its "aura of near infallibility, akin to the ancient oracle of Delphi." The concern dates back to the
Frye
case itself. Because lie detector evidence goes to the heart of the defendant’s guilt or innocence, jurists fear that polygraph experts—were they to be believed—would unduly influence, or even supplant, the jury.

Keeler hoped as much. Not only did he aspire to sway juries with polygraph evidence; he hoped in time to see the jury system abolished. Lay jurors were too easily swayed by pretrial publicity, rhetorical flash, and emotional appeals. As jurors were also incapable of evaluating sophisticated psychological tests, he agreed that they ought not hear polygraph evidence either. Instead, he advocated trying criminal cases before expert criminologists wielding a polygraph, with a judge to rule on legal technicalities. Keeler looked forward to a justice system run with the efficiency, precision, and impersonality of a machine, regardless of whether this ran roughshod over constitutional guarantees or how many lawyers were sidelined.

Perhaps it is not so surprising, then, that the judiciary kept the polygraph out of their criminal courts—while, of course, allowing it to play a role in the invisible 90 percent of criminal cases where it functioned as just another chip in a game of plea bargaining. In any case, though, this formal repudiation was in large part Keeler’s own doing. The main obstacle to credible tests is the large number of "incompetent" examiners who use the test to bamboozle defendants into confessing. But it was Keeler who pioneered the quick training of operators and cultivated a vast marketplace for the kind of expertise that thrives on enhancing the examiner’s discretion. That is, Keeler’s style of lie detection succeeded at its principal task—extracting confessions and intimidating subjects—only if the operators consistently refused to be bound by even the most basic norms and standards. If polygraphers have thrived, it is because they are consummate antiprofessionals.

As for the general public’s credence in the lie detector—the reason judges have been so anxious to shield juries from polygraph evidence—it was Keeler and his successors who cultivated the public myth of the lie detector’s effectiveness, not only to increase the demand for their services, but to make the lie detector that much more potent. Indeed, the lie detector is a placebo science in that it works to the extent the popular culture has been convinced it works—even though it works best when its operators lie.

By the time Keeler decided that his mania for publicity was counterproductive, it was too late. Thus, when his father suggested that he use his lie detector to solve the kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby—the number one crime saga of the 1930s—Keeler wrote back in indignation, even though he was angling to do just that, as were all his competitors. William Marston, Orlando Scott, and even John Larson wanted to test Bruno Hauptmann, the enigmatic immigrant who had been convicted of the crime and was petitioning for a pardon from the governor of New Jersey. Publicly, Keeler announced, "I would like to be the one making the examination." Behind the scenes, he even asked his friend Governor Horner to put in a good word for him. Yet when Keeler’s father drafted a letter to Governor Horner suggesting just this course of action—plus a proposal that the Keeler Polygraph be given before all state executions—years of accumulated resentment poured forth.

Leonarde sternly rebuked his father. It was time for Charles to let him stand on his own merits. "All scientists"—among whom Keeler numbered himself—"fear press reports." Too much coverage was ruining his reputation. "So PLEASE never—never—under any circumstances write to anyone about me or concerning my work….In other words, father, you’ve beenthe grandest father in the world—but your role as a protecting go-between for your children is a thing of the past."

But when it came to indignation, no one could top Charles Keeler. Leonarde’s rebuke had hurt him "as deeply as a son could wound a father….
Please
never-never under any circumstances write to your mother or me another such letter unless you wish knowingly and deliberately to bring on an attack that will prove fatal. " And he elaborated in a sixty-page letter. Alas, Leonarde’s criminological work had made his son "harder and less charitable," even as it crowned him with material success. On further reflection, however, Charles supposed he had only himself to blame if his son had turned against him; he had wanted too much for his children, given them too many spiritual gifts. For the first time he told his son of the nightly words he had recited by his bedside to encourage independence of thought; plainly, this hypnotism had backfired. "I was playing God," he now admitted, "and I left out the side that has so often caused me to suffer at your hands, turned you away from me without meaning to or realizing it."

By return mail Leonarde graciously begged forgiveness. He blamed his emotional outburst, "which I should have controlled," on his overactive sense of shame. The truth, he admitted, was that he admired his father for not giving two cents what other people thought, whereas Leonarde still feared what people thought of him, not just in his personal life, but in his public life as well.

Somewhat mollified, his father advised him to rid himself of "doubts and suspicions and fears" and regard his fellow man—and his father—with "free and easy confidence."

If only it were that easy. But a career of mistrust had made Leonarde wary. One year later, he did just as his father suggested, and the result was the most damaging scandal of his career.

Keeler’s friend Governor Horner was in a political bind. Joseph Rappaport, a resident of Chicago, had been sentenced to die for the murder of a police informant preparing to testify against him about a heroin sale. The mother of the dead man claimed to have witnessed the killing, at South Lawndale and Nineteenth Street, although the police had seen her arrive after they did. But the defense witnesses proved even less credible. One denied, in the morning, that the killer resembled Rappaport, then returned in the afternoon to admit having invented the tale at the behest of Rappaport’s sister. In June 1936, the Illinois supreme court upheld the murder conviction and set a date six months hence for the execution.

From death row Rappaport’s family solicited testimonials from prominent Orthodox and Reform rabbis to put pressure on the Jewish governor. Though personally opposed to the death penalty, Horner had sworn to carry out the law. Yet he granted Rappaport five more stays, including one for the Jewish holiday of Purim. Then, on the day before the execution, Rappaport’s sister accosted the governor at a train station in Chicago. According to the Yiddish papers, her pleas brought tears to the governor’s eyes. In a dramatic flourish, she even invoked an ancient curse—presumably in Yiddish—warning of what would befall the governor should he fail to offer clemency. Cornered, Horner conceded that he "might" consider another postponement if Rappaport passed a lie detector test.

So at nine o’clock at night on March 1, 1937, four hours before the scheduled execution, Keeler sat Rappaport down in his jail cell on death row for a session on the polygraph. Two hours later he phoned the governor to say that Rappaport’s denial was a lie. Two hours after that, Rappaport sat down in the electric chair.

The story was wired around the world, and Rappaport’s record was unfurled across front pages like "the mute lines of doom." Some people called the test a primitive ordeal; others considered it scientific proof of the killer’s guilt. The British press was horrified that a man’s fate should be decided mechanically. Keeler’s colleagues were flabbergasted. How could an operator take a "normal" reading when the subject knew that if he failed he’d be dead within two hours? Larson wrote a commentary in the
Chicago Daily News
that was remarkably restrained, considering the provocation. Privately, however, he excoriated Keeler.

For his part, Horner was defiant. "I can’t afford to be a sentimentalist in this job," he said. Yet for weeks after the execution, according to his biographer, the governor’s pulse rate was high and he suffered from cardiac arrhythmia. Around the same time Keeler also began experiencing severe heart palpitations and dizzy spells. On doctor’s orders Kay had been feeding him a slab of liver each morning, beefsteak at lunch, and two pieces of lamb plus liver soup for dinner, with generous portions of oatmeal, fruit, vegetables, rice, and potatoes. Unfortunately, he washed it all down with alcohol. In addition, he smoked heavily. Kay suffered from fainting spells too, and other unspecified ailments. Since the mid-1930s the couple had been making periodic visits to the Mayo Clinic, ostensibly to test Keeler’s apparatus on mental patients, but in fact to receive treatment: Leonarde for his heart condition and Katherine for infertility. Leonarde assured his father he was not disappointed that she had failed to conceive. "Whatever happens I know we’ll always be mighty happy. She is a wonderful helpmate."