The Identification of Pathological Liars in the Criminal Justice System - Essay Example

? Criminal Law By Due In criminal law cases, witnesses play a huge role in order to establish whether a party is guilty. In many cases, the most important part of evidence is the testimony of a witness. However, it is very hard to establish whether a witness is telling the truth. Some of the witnesses lie deliberately because they have some personal score to settle against the accused, some lie because they get paid for it—which is highly illegal—and some lie just because they suffer from a disorder called pathological lying. It is very important for the courts to determine whether a witness is telling the truth because he may make the courts sentence an innocent man. Therefore, detection of liars is of paramount significance in order to serve justice. It cannot be said with certainty whether pathological lying is really a disorder. There have been opposing views in this regard. This debate has some serious implications on the criminal law because if pathological lying is not a disorder and is deliberate, it should be punishable by law as far as witnesses are concerned. There is no reliable definition of pathological lying as yet but there is agreement in respect of certain core elements that constitute it. This concept was first described by a German physician, Anton Delbruck, who observed that some of his patients could not help themselves from telling such outrageous lies that he had to put them in a special category. These lies were later described by him as "pseu- dologia phantastica." (Dike, 2008) The first step to determine whether a person is a pathological liar is to take a look at his history. The history of a pathological liar is full of lies that are told without any purpose. Normally, a lie is told in order to obtain a certain benefit or advantage. For pathological liars, telling lies is a disease and they tell them even if they provide no benefit to them. What makes this behaviour even more questionable is the fact that some lies play a role in incriminating their teller. This means that yet another feature of pathological lying is that lies are told without any regard to what their consequences might be. There are many real-life stories in which people have lost their jobs because of their pathological lying. Probably the biggest problem with a lie is that it needs many other subsequent lies for support. The people who have this problem do not only include the unfortunate; many successful people have also succumbed to this problem. Judge Patrick Couwenberg of California, for instance, was removed from his office because he lied both in his official capacity and while being under oath to speak the truth during the investigation of his behavior. He was later diagnosed with pseudologia phantastica (Dike, 2008). Being a judge is one of the most prestigious of statuses in the society. One who has achieved this status would never do anything to sabotage it in normal circumstances. Therefore, it was a curious situation that Judge Couwenberg deliberately compromised his position and, all things aside, damaged his reputation. His case makes a strong argument in favor of pathological lying being a mental disorder. Pathological liars are also known as compulsive liars or mythomaniacs. While detecting a pathological liar, there is a great danger of making a wrong diagnosis. However, there are a few very common symptoms of a pathological liar. Firstly, a pathological liar uses a lot of detail in his lie. He fears all the time that he might not be believed by others. This is why he uses a lot of extra information to supplement his lie. Secondly, pathological liars usually want to make their lives look better than they actually are. They feel that they are not being given the right amount of respect by others. Hence, they tell such lies that help them look important and more respectful. Thirdly, pathological liars are in a desperate need of attention. While some of them lie about how great their life is, others lie to make their lives seem difficult and miserable. It creates pity in the hearts of others and the liar ends up getting more attention than normal. Fourthly, and most importantly, the lies of a pathological liar contradict each other with the passage of time. This in turn causes them to make up even bigger lies. This can be very difficult for them as it becomes impossible to create a connection among different lies over the passage of time. This is where a pathological liar really gets caught. (thelastpsychiatrist, 2007) In recent times, a curious case surfaced in the UK when Elizabeth Jones, a 22 year old woman, was jailed when she admitted that she lied about 11 rape cases (Hough, 2013). She confessed that her latest rape allegation against a particular man was a lie. She lied about it because she did not like the man. However, a look at her history reveals that she has been lying about rape since 2004 when she was 13. Wrongfully accusing other men of committing rape is an offense which was committed by Jones at eight different times between 2005 and 2007. Jones was given a ten month detention for the first time in 2009 due to this offence. Her latest accusation was again taken seriously by the police and a proper investigation was carried out. The CCTV footage of the place where she claimed to have been attacked was viewed and it did not support her allegation. An important point in this case is that Jones said that she lied because she did not like the man who was accused. This begs the question whether she really is a compulsive liar. It is because her lie had a clear motive i.e. to hurt the person that she did not like. There is a strong possibility that she had lied in the past due to the same reason. It might be that she lied at the age of 13 to cause trouble for a man that she did not like. Once she succeeded in that, she thought of it as the ideal way to hurt men. Her wrong accusations of rape might be the only consistent lies in her life. A very similar case is that of Leanne Black, a 32 year-old woman in UK, who had lied about being attacked or raped for eight years (Duffin, 2013). She made her accusations after she either broke up or had a row with her boyfriends. She accused a particular partner of hers of drugging her and raping her repeatedly. In another scenario, she made allegations of being kidnapped and molested. Four of her allegations were reported to the police but they never reached the courts because they had no grounds. Her lies contradicted each other in those four cases and she had to admit that she had lied. One of the biggest contradictions occurred when her partner was being investigated following the allegations but it was found that she was still in touch with him though she had been thrown out of his house by him. None of the accused partners were jailed. They were in danger of being sentenced to five years if they had been found guilty. Therefore, these two cases show that lying can lead to huge injustices and can put the criminal justice system into question. However, it cannot be said whether Jones and Black are actually pathological liars because their lies had a specific motive. Their lies were not told in order to get attention. They were told to get revenge. Perhaps the only factor that may help in categorizing the two women as pathological liars is the fact that they did not think about the consequences of their lies and told them blatantly. Both of them ended up in jail. The biggest problem in relation to pathological lying is the confusion whether a pathological liar, whose lie leads to criminal offence, belongs to jail or requires psychiatric treatment. What causes confusion is the conundrum whether pathological liars are devoid of logical thinking. It is not clear whether everything makes sense to them and they have the ability to recognize that lying is a wrong thing to do. There is no clear way of telling whether they believe their lies themselves (Wiersma, 1933). The fact that some pathological liars admit to lying subsequently makes it a very open ended debate. It can be seen in the aforementioned cases that the two women admitted to lying when their lies did not connect with each other. It is very difficult to say whether it was the same stage at which it dawned on the women themselves that they have been lying. It has also been observed that pathological liars feel guilty of their lying repeatedly. They want to reduce their guilt because it also causes them mental pain. Therefore, they admit to lying so that this pain and guilt can be reduced (Dike, 2008). There is a possibility that pathological liars lie because they just like to lie. Some psychiatrists have proposed that pathological liars have a day-dream or a fantasy like scenario in which they take pleasure from lying. The rationale for this type of lying is the fact that liars want to escape from the stress of their daily life and lying makes them feel better. It has been suggested by many analysts that a pathological liar does not lie without any motive. Their motives are internal and only the liars themselves are privy to it. (Dike et al, 2005) While most of the pathological liars do not really commit a crime throughout their lives, most of the crimes that are committed by them are swindling, forgery, plagiarism and theft (King, Ford; 1988). Cheating and stealing have very close connection with lying which is why the words lying, cheating, and stealing have become somewhat connotative. However, over the years, even more intense and serious crimes have surfaced. One of the most prominent cases is that of Jodi Arias. Her ex-boyfriend, Travis Alexander, was brutally murdered in his apartment in Mesa, Arizona. He had received multiple stab wounds and a gunshot to his head. Jodi Arias was charged with first-degree murder (Skoloff, 2013). She pleaded not guilty by saying that she committed the murder in self-defense. She was suspected of murder because a .25 caliber shot was found near the dead body, a shot which was fired from a .25 caliber gun that was in Arias’ possession. The investigators sifted through the possessions of Arias’ grandparents with whom she was living. It was found that a .25 caliber gun was the only missing object among those possessions (People, 2013). When it was established beyond any doubt that Arias was the murderer, a further investigation revealed a very curious behavior on her part. She had been stalking Alexander for quite some time. Alexander’s friends told that Arias had been leaving numerous messages on Alexander’s voicemail and been accessing his Facebook account. During the trial, Arias provided different accounts of Alexander’s death to the police. All of these were lies. Arias told one lie after another which really compromised her credulity. At first, she told the police that she was out of Mesa when the murder was committed. Further, she said that she had last seen Alexander two before the time of his death. This lie was discovered by the police when they recovered the deleted images from a damaged digital camera found at Alexander’s place. The images, taken roughly on the day Alexander died, showed Arias and Alexander together in sexually suggestive poses (Owens, 2013). Afterwards, Arias changed her statement and told the police that a couple of intruders had broken into Alexander’s home who attacked Arias and killed Alexander. With the passage of time, this statement was also found to be untrue. Finally, Arias maintained that she had murdered Alexander but it was done in self-defense. She was convicted of first-degree murder in 2013. Jodi’s claim of self-defense was rejected by the courts because she had not used ‘sufficient force’ to kill him. It was found that she had actually killed Alexander three times. If she had been killing him in self-defense, killing him once would have been sufficient. Arias’ personality has been analyzed by many psychological experts. There is no doubt that Arias is a pathological liar. She told lies and remained insistent unless she realized that her lies were devoid of logical grounds. Some analysts have suggested that Arias’ pathological lying is closely linked to antisocial personality disorder. When one pays heed to Arias’ testimonies in the court, one can observe that Arias never showed any compassion either for Alexander or his parents. Her TV interviews suggest that all the remorse that she had was that she was going to miss a lot of things in her life. She had no regard for the bereaved family. She had realized that whatever pain she was going through was inflicted on her by herself. Another interesting point is that when Arias told her lies, she told them with such firm conviction that it felt that she really believed in all of her lies. This puts a very big question mark on her psychological condition. It also reinforces the dilemma whether she belonged to jail or to a mental asylum. It is because her reactions were very unnatural for a person who had nearly decapitated a man. According to Arias herself, it was when she arrived in the jail when she felt that she had done something terribly wrong. It hints at the fact that maybe she did not know that she was doing something wrong when she massacred a human being terribly. However, it can also not be disregarded that Arias has also shown symptoms of many other personality disorders which may have contributed in her demented state of mind. The correct treatment of pathological liars is a dilemma indeed. But it is more important to first establish whether a person is actually lying. Some people are so good at lying at it becomes impossible at times to determine their credibility. There have been many lie detection tests that have been proposed to find out whether a particular individual is telling the truth. One of these tests is conducted through polygraphs. Polygraphs obtain and measure physiological information from the human body. The focus is on breathing, sweating, and blood pressure. When there is an increase in blood pressure, perspiration and the breathing speed during lie detection, it is likely that the person being tested is nervous or telling a lie (FindLaw, 2013). However, in criminal cases, evidence based on polygraphs can only be used if they meet the following criteria: The reliability of the test must be acknowledged by the general science community; The test is conducted by a qualified professional; and The following of correct procedures must be proved in the court. If any of these criteria is not met, the evidence is not accepted. These criteria, also known as the “Frye Test”, were set in the landmark case of U.S. v. Frye. The U.S Supreme Court, however, definitively replaced the Frye Test in 1993 with a rule that the courts may render a scientific evidence admissible if its underlying theory is able to be tested, is subject to peer review and publication, and the general scientific community accepted it (Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals). Considerable questions have been raised against the reliability of polygraph tests over the years. It has been commonly observed that a person who is going through a polygraph test is already nervous due to the straps and metal plates that are attached to his body. This makes it difficult to determine whether the stress is caused by the lie or the test itself (FindLaw, 2013). Over the years, efforts have been made to improve the lie-detecting machines so that fewer incorrect evidences are produced. However, it has also been suggested that the line of questioning also has a great impact on the accuracy of polygraph tests. This is why, judges have been provided with discretion to allow the polygraph evidence on case by case basis. Powell et al (1983) conducted lie detection tests on a group of pathological liars and on another group of normal people. It was reported that there was sufficient evidence to support that pathological liars showed very normal “guilty responses” when they lied during their tests. This study adds more difficulty to the prevailing situation. But at the same time, it provides a relief that lie-detection tests are sufficient to establish whether truth is being told. Whether a person is a pathological liar or not is of secondary importance as far as the criminal justice system is concerned. The primary importance is to serve justice to the accused. It has been observed in a myriad of cases that the existence of pathological liars has also provided a very dependable line of defence for actual criminals. While pathological liars may cause an irreparable damage to the innocent, they may also provide actual criminals a way out. Especially during testimonies, if a pathological liar is called to the stand, his testimony is always discounted if it is found out that he has a history of compulsively lying. This may lead to actual criminals going scot-free (Ford, 1999). The legendary and controversial trial of OJ Simpson’s murder trial is one of the cases in which the lying history of the witnesses was brought into question. OJ Simpson not only faced a criminal trial but he also faced a civil trial. He was sued by the families of Brown and Goldman, the victims, for damages for the wrongful death of the two (CNN, 1997). In this case, two attorneys called Simpson a compulsive liar and asked the jury to balance his credibility. The attorneys also called some of the witnesses pathological liars. This line of attack was not one-sided though. Both the defence and the prosecution did their best to diminish the credibility of each other. The defence tried their best to rehabilitate Simpson by minimizing his actions and trying to make the witnesses look weak. Their attempts were unsuccessful as the jury did not believe Simpson. It became quite clear that Simpson was lying. For instance, Simpson maintained that he never owned Bruno Magli shoes despite the existence of over thirty photographs which showed him wearing those shoes. Also, there were a number of photos that showed cuts and abrasions on his hands, and Simpson gave different accounts of the source of those injuries at different times (Schuetz, Lilley; 1999). These lies cost Simpson a lawsuit. This trial is a very good example of how the concept of pathological lying can be abused. On the other hand, it is also very hard to establish whether Simpson himself is a pathological liar. The fact that Simpson lied about the shoes and the bruises on his hands repeatedly may suggest that he really is a compulsive liar. This can be countered by the fact that he might possibly be lying out of necessity. There can be number of factors behind his lies. However, he did not consider the consequence of his changing statements regarding a singular event. This indicates that he might actually be a pathological liar. Psychiatrists have wondered for over a century whether pathological lying is a disease (Dike, 2005). So far, it is only regarded as a symptom of another psychological disorder. In the cases of the women who accused innocent men of rape, it seems to be true that their pathological lying might be a result of another disorder. It is because they seemed genuinely preoccupied by some strange thoughts which drove them into causing damage to the people that they hated. The case of Jodi Arias genuinely does not revolve around pathological lying as the primary concern. There is something very wrong with Arias’ mind. If the pathological liars are taken on a whole, it can be seen only those people are considered as pathological liars whose lies are actually caught. There might be millions of other pathological liars who spend all their lives lying but are never caught. It is probably because many pathological liars lie because they seek the attention of others. This motive can be satisfied by telling harmless lies that do not affect anyone. Such lies do not taint the criminal justice system either. However, compulsive lying can be extremely harmful when it is coupled by another mental disorder that might create a very deranged mind. Arias is one such pathological liar. She was obsessed with Alexander which explains her stalking him. She broke up with him quite some time ago but was unable to let go of him in reality. It was some other mental disorder that made her somewhat immune to Alexander’s misery when she murdered him brutally. It was much later that she realized her wrongdoing. In her case, pathological lying had just played the role of a symptom of other disorders which may include Narcissistic Personality Disorder; Sociopaths, Psychopaths and Antisocial Personality Disorder etc. Pathological lying is often regarded as a symptom of a psychiatric condition known as Factitious Disorder (Dike, 2005). In this order, the patient feigns physical or psychological trauma which helps in making him appear as sick. However, there have also been people who assume the role of a sick person but do not lie to achieve it. Therefore, pathological lying is not a necessary symptom of Factitious Disorder. Further, some pathological liars, who do not have any other underlying psychological disorder, have also emerged on the scene. This makes is very debatable whether pathological lying is a disease in itself. Pathological lying also has a little connection with delusion. A deluded person holds on to a belief so firmly that he never gives it up even when he is provided with irrefutable evidence of the contrary. Some pathological liars have also shown signs of delusion but they usually give up their lies when they see that their lie does not have any logical grounds. It is mostly done because of the feeling of guilt. Pathological liars accept their lies so that they can reduce their guilt. However, delusional persons never show any feeling of guilt because they genuinely believe their lies to be true. It is advisable to take help from the theories of Sigmund Freud to describe mythomania. The concept of psychological positivism emphasizes the unconscious and instinctive base of the human behavior. In the context of criminology, this concept explains that the motive of crime might be cultivated in a human being unconsciously. Most of the times, the criminals come from a troubled childhood and they have many unresolved issues. Further, the society in which they grow up may also play a huge role in this by repressing certain traits of one’s personality. Suppression of rage and other personality conflicts also play a very negative role in a person’s mental development. However, further studies in this regard have produced conflicting and inconclusive evidence. Hans Eysenck (1967) suggests that criminal behavior is expected to be more in the extrovert people than the introverts. It is because introvert people fear punishment more than the extroverts and their anxiety reactions are more conditioned. Extroverts, on the other hand, respond much less to the conditioning of behavior and are more inclined towards delinquency. Eysenck’s “introverts” are in line with the theory presented by Skinner (1972) which says that human beings develop a behavior when they respond to a consistent stimulus. This conditioning of behavior is further reinforced through expected rewards and punishments. However, the general application of these theories is almost impossible. It is because human psychological condition is the most veritable department in the whole world. No two human beings can be exactly like one another when it comes of the mental state. Even the twins that grow up together are bound to have some differences in their personalities. Further, the findings of the aforementioned researchers are based on empirical evidence. Their subjects were observed in a controlled phenomenon. These types of behavioral instructions are not really practicable in real life. This is exactly the point that Anthony Burgess (1962) made in his famous novella, A Clockwork Orange. The main character of that novel is instructed by the society to behave in a specific way. Instead, his mental capacity gets severely challenged. The psychological findings that come from experiments conducted on a few people cannot be generalized because the human race is too vast and versatile. The criminal justice system is largely concerned with the minimization of crime. There is no better way of minimizing crime than serving true justice. The innocent must be acquitted and the guilty must be punished. So far, pathological liars have been dealt in a similar way and it seems very fair. It is because there is seldom any evidence that a certain pathological liar is of an unsound mind. Any person who is capable of reason must abide by the law. The problem still persists to a great degree because if pathological lying is a mental disorder, sentencing the liars to prison might not be regarded as justice. It has been seen in the aforementioned cases that people lie in criminal trials largely to save themselves or to hurt the opposing party. However, there are also such pathological liars who cannot stop lying to their own defense attorneys. Such liars may also be regarded as incompetent to stand trial (Dike, 2005). It is important to notice that such liars are often having some other mental disorder and pathological lying is just secondary. This means that the courts need to handle each case individually. It is possible to detect pathological liars but the major problem is how to deal with them. The courts have handed sentences, punishments and pardons as they do in normal circumstances. The severity of the crime also plays a huge role. It is not only important to deal with pathological liars justifiably, but it is also essential to keep other people safe from any potential danger. For instance, it is not safe to let a person like Jodi Arias live in the normal society because even if her actions were involuntary, she is a great danger to the normal society. Before anything conclusive can be done in this regard, pathological lying first needs to a recognized as a mental disease in Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV). It seems that this is unlikely to happen because most of the criminals have some more severe mental condition of which pathological lying constitutes just a small part. Women seem to have a tendency of being compulsive liars more than men because they are more status conscious and tend to need more attention. A narcissistic attitude is also found in the women who have made false accusations of rape. This means that pathological lying may not be a menace in itself. But it becomes one when it works in tandem with an even more serious mental disorder. References Arandle, K. (n.d). Mental Health & Criminal Justice. Retreived from http://kristinarandle.com/blog/jodi-arias-essays/ Burgess, A. (1962). A Clockwork Orange. W. W. Norton & Company. Dike, C. C. (2008). Pathological Lying: Symptom or Disease? Psychiatric Times. Retreived from http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/articles/pathological-lying-symptom-or-disease Dike, C.C., Baranoski, M. & Griffith, E.H. (2005). 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