New Insights to Help Police Distinguish Liars

A recent article talks about new research that is being done to assist

police in sorting out truthful and deceitful information provided by

individuals. 

Research indicates that truth tellers add more details while those who

are deceitful tend to stick to the script that they provide. 

Many of the former "clues" that police relied upon are in fact of no

value. There is little difference in body actions or eye contact or

much else physiologically between those who tell the truth and others.

There will undoubtedly be a group of officers who will scoff at the

research and continue to use their own yardsticks. These yardsticks

have led to innocents becoming defendants and even sentenced

because the police never gave sufficient attention to details that

were contrary to the actual evidence -- coroner says trajectory

of weapon indicates left-handed individual but suspect is 

right-handed would be an obvious example. 

Another interesting result was the value of a conversational approach

as opposed to the confrontational one suspects usually undergo.