PDD Examiner Competency - Part One - Elmer Criswell
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One of the milestones for "success" in the polygraph
field has been that of a PDD Examiner having the
opportunity to have polygraph evidence from their
case admitted into court through the testimony of
the PDD Examiner. My first opportunity came in the
early 1980's after being an examiner for
approximately 10 years. I was asked to give
foundation testimony on a burglary case in West
Virginia where the Judge was attempting to establish
a record for the State Supreme Court's review by
allowing the evidence over the objection of the
prosecution.

The defense attorney and I prepared each other well
for the foundation testimony (except in one critical
area), and the prosecution was totally unprepared
(which was very obvious during the voir dire (a
verbal examination to determine if a witness meets
the qualifications as an expert - no questions about
the case can be asked during this) so the testimony
went well the first day for the defense.

For those readers unfamiliar with "foundation
testimony", it is a justification that gives the
Judge a proper basis for allowing scientific
evidence to be admitted into court. It is a
recitation of the history of polygraphy; the
physiological, psychological, and
psychophysiological basis of polygraphy; the extensive
use of polygraphy (then) by business and industry as
well as dependence by law enforcement, military,
government, and intelligence agencies; the theories
supporting polygraphy; and validity and reliability
studies.

In other words, it is a short course on polygraphy
so that the Judge (or jury in some cases) can
understand what has occurred when the polygraphist
testifies as to their expert opinion of truth or
deception by the examinee.

Some PDD Examiners will give the foundation
testimony and will give testimony as to their
opinion of truth or deception of the examinee. In
this case, the PDD Examiner did not feel confident
giving foundation testimony, and I was hired for
this purpose.

The testimony on direct examination took almost
the entire day. The PDD Examiner who did the
examination had not been able to be there for
the first day of trial due to some military
commitment. It was not until the morning of the
second day that I was finally able to see the
examiner's charts on the case which I had asked to
see the day before the trial when we were preparing
but were, unfortunately, with the examiner. Had I
seen the charts first, there would have been no
attempt to have the evidence admitted.

When I scored the charts, I originally thought the
examiner was playing a joke. I asked to see the
real charts, and the examiner gave me a quizzical
look and told me they were the real charts. He had
scored the person a +18 (clearly No Deception) on an
Army Zone Comparison Test. I had scored the person
as a -28 (clearly Deceptive).

The examiner had mistakenly scored
relief/compensation to all of the crime questions as
deception on the other questions. When I explained
this to him, he was totally unaware of what I was
talking about. He later took me to his office where
I looked at his polygraph school training manual,
and there was no mention of relief/compensation
patterns, especially not how to delineate them from
deception patterns.

This created an obvious dilemma for the defense
attorney even though my job had not been to quality
control the examination. In West Virginia, at
that time, restricted cross-examination was not in
effect so the prosecution could ask if I evaluated
the charts even if the defense attorney did not
mention it during the direct examination. If it
were a state requiring restricted cross examination,
the question could not be asked unless the defense
attorney broached the subject first.

I suggested that we withdraw the testimony, but the
defense attorney felt that since the prosecutor was
so unprepared, it would not be a problem. The
additional problem was that the polygraphist who
did the test was still going to testify as to the
examinee's "non-deception", in his opinion.

Unfortunately (for polygraphy), or fortunately (for
justice), the prosecution got better prepared
overnight and the "you-know-what" "hit the fan" when
he asked if I had examined the polygraph charts. I
testified that my opinion was that the examinee was
lying as to whether or not he committed the break-
in. Fortunately, the Judge was impressed enough with
the foundation testimony to rule it out of the
hearing and not let the other examiner testify so it
did not become a complete circus.

The purpose of this whole story is a lead-in to my
Editorial in the next Chronicles which resulted from
some of the debates that occurred during the AAPP
Seminar over the ASTM "Paired Testing" Standard,
originally known as the Marin Protocol.

It is a standard that sets rather rigid requirements
for those who do polygraph testing for the courts or
for attorneys where witnesses or a victim-witness or
a victim-alleged perpetrator are making statements
diametrically-opposed to each other.

This standard is designed to reduce the error rate
on these types of tests to less than 1% based upon
a mathematical formula devised by Mr. Marin. The
standard also establishes competency requirements
for those who wish to participate in "paired
testing."

The competency issues, and testing thereof, will be
the main thrust of the Editorial. The PDD Examiner
who conducted the aforementioned burglary
examination was considered competent by the industry
standards. He had graduated from a polygraph school
accredited by the American Polygraph Association
with very high grades; he had a baccalaureate degree
(graduating with high honors) from an excellent,
academic institution; he had 7 years of full-time
experience as an examiner and had conducted
thousands of examinations (specific, periodic, and
pre-employment). He met the standard under the 1972
Ridling v. U.S. decision (the first federal
appellate court case that allowed the introduction
of polygraph evidence) for qualifying as an expert
witness. He was a Full Member of the American
Polygraph Association and attended continuing
education programs on a regular basis.

He met all the levels of what was considered as
competent. Unfortunately, he just couldn't read
charts. I check some of his other cases for him (he
was very concerned about his deficiency), and they
were also poorly evaluated. His test question
construction and test format were excellent, but his
test data analysis skills were extremely below par.

Obviously, some of this was the result of his basic
training (at least as far as what was not present in
the training manual. Whether it was ever covered in
lecture or chart analysis classes, I don't know.

Regardless, the school is no longer in existence. I
spent hours with him at later dates covering
compensatory/relief patterns, but he could never get
it. When the Employee Polygraph Protection Act went
into being in 1988, he had already left the field
since his credibility in the legal community had
been crushed by the defense attorney (as well as his
own inability to read charts).

In summary, I will discuss "competency" in the next
issue, and what we should be doing about it because
this, unfortunately, is not an isolated case of
incompetence. If you have done any amount of even
cursory quality reviews of polygraph tests, you will
see that we have a serious issue here.

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