Bronx Justice. Joseph Teller
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even a lit cigarette can be seen from the other side. Okay?”
“Okay.”
Sandusky closed the door tightly behind him. A minute or two later, he appeared in the testing room, followed by Darren. Jaywalker’s instinctive reaction was to lean back, away from the glass, certain he could be seen. But Darren’s gaze paused only momentarily at the mirror, without any sign of recognition.
“All right, Darren,” said Sandusky. “Why don’t you have a seat right here.” His voice was loud and clear through the speaker. If Jaywalker had earlier felt he was abandoning his client, he now had the sense that he was spying on him. But it didn’t occur to him to look away or cover his ears. Instead, he watched and listened intently as Darren sat down. He took his eyes off him only long enough to glance at his watch. It was 9:44.
“Now,” said Sandusky, “this is the machine we’ve all been talking about.” He patted the polygraph affectionately. It was about the size of a large phonograph or old reel-to-reel tape recorder, and had wires that led to various attachments. At one end of the machine was a roll of graph paper, with needles balanced on it.
Sandusky flicked a switch on the side of the machine. The paper began to move slowly. The needles didn’t.
“You see what it’s doing?” he asked.
“It’s dr-dr-drawing straight lines,” said Darren.
“Right. How come a straight line?”
“It’s not turned on?” Darren guessed.
“No, it’s turned on,” said Sandusky. “See, the paper’s moving. But how come the lines aren’t moving up and down?”
“It’s not attached to anything?”
“Exactly. This machine does one thing, and only one thing.” Here Sandusky paused for effect. “It moves paper. You do the rest.”
Sandusky began making adjustments to the machine, continuing to speak as he did so. “Darren,” he said, “put your right hand out in front of you and wiggle your fingers.”
Darren obeyed.
“Very good. Now your left hand.”
Darren obeyed again.
“Good. You’ve just used part of your nervous system. We have two types of nerves,” Sandusky explained, “voluntary nerves and involuntary nerves. By moving your fingers, you just controlled certain nerves in your hands. Because you can control them, we call them voluntary. Now,” he continued, attaching a blood pressure cuff to Darren’s forearm and inflating it, “notice that our machine works after all.”
Indeed, one of the needles had come to life and was dancing up and down on the paper.
“Okay, Darren, I want you to make your heart stop pumping for thirty seconds.”
Darren smiled uncertainly.
“What’s so funny?” Sandusky asked.
“I c-c-can’t.”
“Why not?”
“You can’t stop your heart.”
“Precisely,” Sandusky agreed. “That’s because your heart is run by involuntary nerves. You can’t control them. And that’s all that this test is about, involuntary nerves. Things that happen inside your body that you can’t control.”
Jaywalker couldn’t help but smile. It was mesmerizing. This guy could have been a terrific car salesman, he decided, or an awesome preacher. Or both. He could sell used Chevys all week and salvation come Sunday.
Even as he’d been talking, Sandusky had attached a second strap to Darren’s other wrist, and two to his torso—one around his chest, the other around his midsection. “By the way,” he assured Darren, “none of this is going to hurt at all.” He taped a final strap to the palm of one of Darren’s hands. Each attachment—and there were now five of them—was connected by a wire to one of the needles, which moved visibly up and down on the graph paper and recorded Darren’s blood pressure, pulse, upper and lower respiration, and galvanic skin response…the electrical conductivity of the skin, which increases with sweating.
“Now, Darren,” said Sandusky, “I’ve got three cards here.” He held them up so that not only Darren, but also Jaywalker, could see that the first was blue, the second pink and the third blue except for a pink border along the top. “I’m going to ask you some questions about them. I want you to answer ‘Yes’ to each of my questions. No matter what, just answer ‘Yes.’ Understand?”
“Yes,” said Darren.
Sandusky held up the blue card. “Is this card blue?” he asked.
“Yes,” Darren answered.
Sandusky held up the pink card. “Is this card blue?”
“Yes,” Darren answered.
Sandusky held up the blue card with the pink border. “Is this card blue?”
“Yes.”
After each response, Sandusky had marked the graph paper for later reference. Now he stopped the machine and deflated the blood pressure cuff. While Darren stretched and rubbed his forearm, Sandusky studied the paper.
“Wow!” he exclaimed. “We’re not going to have any trouble, not a bit. I’d say you’re a very sensitive young man, Darren. Has anyone ever told you that? That you’re sensitive?”
“Yes,” said Darren. “I’ve heard people say that.”
“I’m not surprised,” said Sandusky, still studying the paper. “These responses are very sharp. On the first question, about the blue card, you showed a definite truth. On the second question, the pink card, you showed a definite lie, no question about it. What do you think you showed on the third question?” He held up the blue card with the pink border.
“I d-d-d-don’t know,” said Darren. “Half and half?”
“Nope, not according to this. On the third question, you showed a lie, just as strong as the second. See, this card really isn’t blue, is it?” He held it up again. “Now you may think that’s not fair, that you were being mostly truthful when you said it was blue. But I’m afraid you can’t get away with mostly here. It’s sort of like the kind of white lie we sometimes tell people, like saying ‘I love you,’ or ‘I feel fine,’ or ‘You look terrific,’ when it’s not completely true. You see, it may be okay to tell white lies to people, to spare their feelings, say. But not to the machine. The machine has no feelings. To the machine, a white lie is like any other lie.
“Let me give you an example, Darren, one actually not too different from your case. I tested a guy last year on a rape. Girl claimed the guy had followed her home, forced his way into her apartment and raped her. He denied it, claimed he’d never seen the girl in his life. His lawyer asked him if he’d be willing to take a polygraph test. He said okay, and he came to see me. I tested him, and he flunked. It was only months later that I found out the real story. Seems he’d picked the girl up in a bar, and she’d invited him back to her apartment. They started to get real friendly, know what I mean?”
Darren nodded.
“Right at the last minute, she gets cold feet. But he figures she’s only being cute, playing hard to get. And he’s not about to stop by that time, anyway. So he goes through with it. Was it really a rape? Who knows? She must have thought so, ’cause right after he leaves, she calls the police. When they bring him in for questioning, he denies knowing the girl or having been in her apartment, everything. And he had the police believing him, figuring they had the wrong guy. But not the machine. The machine—” and here Sandusky patted it affectionately “—showed only that he was lying. It didn’t understand mostly.
“The result was,” Sandusky continued, “the guy got jammed up real bad. Much worse than if he’d come clean in the first place.