UK Justice Forum 🇬🇧
Other High Profile Cases and Persons of Interest => Adrian Prout and the murder of his wife Kate. Case now concluded as Adrian has admitted to strangling his wife. => Topic started by: John on March 03, 2012, 11:10:00 PM
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(http://i.imgur.com/dA8R0.jpg)
CONVICTED killer Adrian Prout is furious over a prison governor's refusal to let him take a lie detector test.
The Redmarley farmer says he is turning to the European Court of Human Rights in a bid to overturn his life sentence.
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His estranged wife Kate's body was not found after an extensive search of the £1.2million farm they shared.
Now the 49-year-old, whose fianceé Debbie Garlick gave birth to his daughter Evie nine months ago, is furious his attempts to sit a three-hour honesty test behind bars in Bristol have been refused.
Prout plans to contact officials in Brussels to win the legal right to take the lie test, because he is convinced Kate vanished during stormy divorce proceedings and has since rebuilt her life.
No trace of the former school teacher has been found since she vanished from their farmhouse in Redmarley on bonfire night in 2007.
Mrs Garlick, 40, who did not know Prout when he was first arrested and bailed for murder, said: "He's very down and believes the authorities' refusal to let him undergo the test is a blatant infringement of his human rights.
"Adrian knows he didn't kill Kate and will do everything in his power to prove it.
"The test is proven to be almost 100 per cent accurate and Adrian wouldn't be so daft as to sit it if he had killed Kate, would he?"
Kate disappeared without taking her clothes, car keys, car, and money. She has not touched her bank account.
A jury convicted Prout with a majority verdict of 10 to one.
A spokesman for the Prison Service told Mrs Garlick a polygraph test could only be facilitated by a court order.
Gloucestershire police said they had not been made aware of a formal appeal.
http://www.thisisgloucestershire.co.uk/Prout-set-court-battle-lie-test/story-11857827-detail/story.html
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From the archives........
If lie-detector tests can nail the guilty, why can't they free the innocent?
So, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is set to pilot the use of lie detectors to uncover benefit fraud and impose a "one strike and you're out" approach to anybody found fiddling the system.
Highly laudable, given that, according to DWP figures, the cost of such fiddling was estimated to cost the treasury £800m in 2006-07.
I wonder if its colleagues at HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) will follow a similar approach in nailing tax avoiders who, according to HMRC calculations, currently cost the Treasury between £10bn and £40bn a year?
We should not hold our breath while waiting to see if the super rich and their accountants are found to have altered the pitch and tone of their voices in a way that beats the lie detector's antennae.
Nearer to home, as far as your correspondent is concerned, the probation service proposes to use polygraphs on sex offenders released on licence.
I am outraged at the hypocrisy of a government that allows some of its departments to use lie detectors to combat fraud and monitor sex offenders, yet refuses to let people protesting their innocence use the same technology.
Currently, there are hundreds of prisoners who claim to be innocent of the charges that put them behind bars. Many of them have been in prison for years, even decades.
Dozens have stated their willingness to take a lie-detector test in an effort to clear their name and gain their freedom. In every case, the Ministry of Justice has refused point blank to consider such requests.
Few have effective legal representation, many have none at all. Yet it is virtually impossible to obtain legal aid without a solicitor, and equally difficult to get the Criminal Cases Review Commission to consider cases not referred to them by lawyers.
Passing a lie-detector test would, at the very least, suggest the need for properly funded legal rep representation.
Solicitor Campbell Malone, from Stephensons, has been involved in miscarriages of justice cases for years and has been instrumental in overturning convictions in many high-profile murder cases.
He says dozens of his clients have urged him to let them take lie-detector tests. He has had to tell them that the courts will not consider evidence from such tests. He says there is an "interesting" contrast between the various government agencies in respect of the tests.
Freed from the need for legal politeness, I regard it as hypocritical in the extreme that government departments intent on stopping benefit fraud regard the polygraph test as a helpful instrument, while the so-called Ministry of Justice refuses to allow those claiming to be wrongfully convicted to use the same technology.
Few people would suggest that lie-detector machines are infallible, though their findings are admissible evidence in many countries.
Supporters of the machines point to a mass of data showing people failing the test and having their deceit later corroborated by other evidence.
Detractors say many governments, law enforcement agencies and private-sector companies really use polygraphs in the hope that they will frighten away liars and cheats.
Whatever the truth, if the machines are considered a useful tool by a department intent on nailing benefit cheats, how can they be ignored by the department charged with overseeing the dispensing of justice?
What is more important: people claiming a few quid a week more than they are entitled to or innocent prisoners, who have already rotted behind bars for years, continuing to do so for years to come?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/joepublic/2008/dec/04/socialexclusion-prisonsandprobation
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People just don't seem to understand that the polygraph test is unreliable and prone to many outside influences. Indeed, there have been several documented cases in the US of prisoners passing lie detector tests only to be later found out as liars. A polygraph test can be influenced by stimulating pain receptors in the body. The equipment works on the basis of minute changes in physiological indices such as blood pressure, pulse, respiration, and skin conductivity. The belief being that deceptive answers will produce physiological responses that can be differentiated from those associated with non-deceptive answers.
The Law in the UK as it stands is that polygraph evidence is not accepted by courts but in saying that, the testimony of the polygraph operator can be designated expert testimony....work that one out if you can!
Something worth remembering also is that if we go down the road of accepting polygraph tests as a sign of guilt or innocence, our prisons will soon fill up with innocent people while many guilty will go free.
Bottom line is forget about this nonsense because given current technology, that is all it is.