Truth serum
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"Truth serum" is a colloquial name for any of a range of psychoactive drugs used in an effort to obtain information from subjects who are unable or unwilling to provide it otherwise. These include ethanol, scopolamine, 3-quinuclidinyl benzilate, midazolam, flunitrazepam, sodium thiopental, and amobarbital, among others.
Although a variety of such substances have been tested, serious issues have been raised about their use scientifically, ethically and legally. There is currently no drug proven to cause consistent or predictable enhancement of truth-telling.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Subjects questioned under the influence of such substances have been found to be suggestible and their memories subject to reconstruction and fabrication. While such drugs have been used in the course of investigating civil and criminal cases, they have not been accepted by Western legal systems and legal experts as genuine investigative tools.<ref name="Rinde"/> In the United States, it has been suggested that their use is a potential violation of the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution (the right to remain silent).<ref name="guardian.co.uk"/><ref name="Find.Law">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Concerns have also been raised through the European Court of Human Rights, arguing that use of a truth serum could be considered a violation of a human right to be free from degrading treatment,<ref name="Sadoff">Template:Cite book</ref> or could be considered a form of torture,<ref name="Keller">Template:Cite journal</ref> and has been noted as a violation of the Inter-American Convention to Prevent and Punish Torture.<ref name="Human Rights Watch">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
"Truth serum" was previously used in the management of psychotic patients in the practice of psychiatry.<ref>Naples M, Hackett TP: The amytal interview: history and current uses. Psychosomatics01 1978; 19: 98–105.</ref> In a therapeutic context, the controlled administration of intravenous hypnotic medications is called "narcosynthesis" or "narcoanalysis". Such application was first documented by Dr. William Bleckwenn. Reliability and suggestibility of patients are concerns, and the practice of chemically inducing an involuntary mental state is now widely considered to be a form of torture.<ref>Tollefson GD: The amobarbital interview in the differential diagnosis of catatonia. Psychosomatics 1982; 23: 437–438.</ref><ref>Bleckwenn WJ: Production of sleep and rest in psychotic cases. Arch Neurol Psychiatry 1930; 24: 365–375.</ref>
Active chemical substancesEdit
Sedatives or hypnotics that alter higher cognitive function include ethanol, scopolamine, 3-quinuclidinyl benzilate, potent short or intermediate acting hypnotic benzodiazepines such as midazolam, flunitrazepam, and various short and ultra-short acting barbiturates, including sodium thiopental (commonly known by the brand name Pentothal) and amobarbital (formerly known as sodium amytal).<ref name="Barbiturates">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name="Rinde">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name="Winter">Template:Cite book</ref>
ReliabilityEdit
While there have been many clinical studies of the efficacy of narcoanalysis in interrogation or lie detection, there is dispute whether any of them qualify as a randomized, controlled study, that would meet scientific standards for determining effectiveness.<ref name=ijme2006debate>There is some controversy to this point; see IJME debate in Template:Cite journal and Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name=misquitta2011>A simple search: {{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name=frontline2007>Template:Cite magazine Indirecy quotation from B.M. Mohan</ref><ref name=cia1961>Template:Cite tech report</ref>
Use by countryEdit
IndiaEdit
India's Central Bureau of Investigation has used intravenous barbiturates for interrogation, often in high-profile cases.<ref name="Rinde"/> One such case was the interrogation of Ajmal Kasab, the only terrorist captured alive by police in the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, India.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite newsTemplate:Cbignore</ref> Kasab was a Pakistani<ref name="Dawn Pakistani Newspaper">The government of Pakistan initially denied that Kasab was a Pakistani citizen, but, in January 2009, it confirmed his citizenship. Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="SupremeAppeal">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> militant and a member of the Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist group.<ref name="azam">Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="b-mirror">Template:Cite news</ref> On 3 May 2010, Kasab was found guilty of 80 offences, including murder, waging war against India, possessing explosives, and other charges.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> On 6 May 2010, the same trial court sentenced him to death on four counts and to a life sentence on five counts.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
The Central Bureau of Investigation also conducted this test on Krishna, a key witness and suspect in the high-profile 2008 Aarushi-Hemraj Murder Case to seek more information from Krishna and also determine his credibility as a witness with key information, yet not known to the investigating authorities. Per unverified various media sources, Krishna had purported to have deemed Hemraj (the prime suspect) as not guilty of Aarushi's murder, claiming he [Hemraj] "treated Aarushi like his own daughter".
On May 5, 2010 the Supreme Court Judge Balasubramaniam in the case "Smt. Selvi vs. State of Karnataka" held that narcoanalysis, polygraph and brain mapping tests were to be allowed with the consent of the accused. The judge stated: "We are of the considered opinion that no individual can be forced and subjected to such techniques involuntarily, and by doing so it amounts to unwarranted intrusion of personal liberty."<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
In Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh High Court permitted narcoanalysis in the investigation of a killing of a tiger that occurred in May 2010. The Jhurjhura Tigress at Bandhavgarh National Park, a mother of three cubs, was found dead as a result of being hit by a vehicle. A Special Task Force requested the narcoanalysis testing of four persons, one of whom refused to consent on grounds of potential post-test complications.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
USSREdit
In 2004, Novaya Gazeta, with reference to KGB General Oleg Kalugin, published an article that said that since the end of the 1980s the First and Second Directorates of the KGB had used, in exceptional cases and mostly on foreign citizens, a soluble odourless, colourless and tasteless substance code-named SP-117, an improved successor to similar drugs used by the KGB prior, that was effective in making a subject lose control of oneself 15 minutes after intake.<ref name="kalugin">РЫБКИНУ ДАЛИ СП-117? Novaya Gazeta, 15 February 2004.</ref> Most importantly, a person who would be given, consecutively, two parts of the drug, i.e. both the "dote" and "antidote", would have no recollection of what had occurred in between and feel afterward as though he had suddenly fallen asleep, the preferable way to administer the "dote" being in an alcoholic drink, as that would serve as a plausible explanation of the sudden onset of drowsiness.<ref name="kalugin" />
Other reports state that SP-117 was just a form of concentrated alcohol meant to be added to alcoholic drinks such as champagne.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Russian FederationEdit
According to the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) officer, Alexander Kouzminov, who quit the service in the early 1990s, the officers of SVR′s Directorate S, which runs SVR's "illegals", primarily used the drug to verify fidelity and trustworthiness of their agents who operated overseas, such as Vitaly Yurchenko.<ref name="Kuzminov">Alexander Kouzminov Biological Espionage: Special Operations of the Soviet and Russian Foreign Intelligence Services in the West, Greenhill Books, 2006, Template:ISBN [1].</ref> According to Alexander Litvinenko, Russian presidential candidate Ivan Rybkin was drugged with the same substance by FSB agents during his kidnapping in 2004.<ref name="Goldfarb">Alex Goldfarb and Marina Litvinenko. Death of a Dissident: The Poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko and the Return of the KGB. New York: Free Press, 2007. Template:ISBN.</ref>
United StatesEdit
Scopolamine was promoted by obstetrician Robert Ernest House as an advance that would prevent false convictions, beginning in 1922. He had noted that women in childbirth who were given scopolamine could answer questions accurately even while in a state of twilight sleep, and were oftentimes "exceedingly candid" in their remarks. House proposed that scopolamine could be used when interrogating suspected criminals. He even arranged to administer scopolamine to prisoners in the Dallas County jail. Both men were believed to be guilty, both denied guilt under scopolamine, and both were eventually acquitted.<ref name=cia1961/> In 1926, the use of scopolamine was rejected in a court case, by Judge Robert Walker Franklin, who questioned both its scientific origin, and the uncertainty of its effect.<ref name="Winter"/><ref name="Rinde"/>
The United States Office of Strategic Services (OSS) experimented with the use of mescaline, scopolamine, and marijuana as possible truth drugs during World War II. They concluded that the effects were not much different from those of alcohol: subjects became more talkative but that did not mean they were more truthful. Like hypnosis, there were also issues of suggestibility and interviewer influence. Cases involving scopolamine resulted in a mixture of testimonies both for and against those suspected, at times directly contradicting each other.<ref name="Rinde"/><ref name="Lee"/>
LSD was also considered as a possible truth serum, but found unreliable.<ref name="Rinde"/> During the 1950s and 1960s, the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) carried out a number of investigations including Project MKUltra<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and Project MKDELTATemplate:Cn, which involved illegal use of truth drugs including LSD.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name="Lee">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="Brown">Template:Cite news</ref> A CIA report from 1961, released in 1993, concludes:
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In 1963, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in Townsend v. Sain, that confessions produced as a result of ingestion of truth serum were "unconstitutionally coerced" and therefore inadmissible.<ref>Townsend v. Sain, Sheriff, et al., 372 U.S. 293, 307-308</ref> The viability of forensic evidence produced from truth sera has been addressed in lower courts – judges and expert witnesses have generally agreed that they are not reliable for lie detection.<ref>See for example Template:Cite court</ref>
In 1967, during his investigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison arranged for his key witness, Perry Russo, to be administered sodium pentothal before being questioned about his knowledge regarding an alleged conspiracy.<ref>JFK Assassination System Archives.gov</ref> Russo would later describe "his conditioning by the DA's office as a complete brainwashing job."<ref>Memo by Edward F. Wegmann of interview with Perry Russo, January 27, 1971.</ref>
In 1995, during the search for evidence that could acquit Andres English-Howard, his defense attorney employed methohexital.
More recently, a judge approved the use of narcoanalysis in the 2012 Aurora, Colorado shooting trial to evaluate whether James Eagan Holmes's state of mind was valid for an insanity plea.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Judge William Sylvester ruled that prosecutors would be allowed to interrogate Holmes "under the influence of a medical drug designed to loosen him up and get him to talk", such as sodium amytal, if he filed an insanity plea.<ref name=guardian.co.uk/> The hope was that a 'narcoanalytic interview' could confirm whether or not he had been legally insane on 20 July, the date of the shootings.<ref name=guardian.co.uk>Template:Cite news</ref> It is not known whether such an examination was carried out.<ref name="Rinde"/>
William Shepherd, chair of the criminal justice section of the American Bar Association, stated, with respect to the Holmes case, that use of a "truth drug" as proposed, "to ascertain the veracity of a defendant's plea of insanity... would provoke intense legal argument relating to Holmes's right to remain silent under the fifth amendment of the US constitution."<ref name="guardian.co.uk"/> Discussing possible effectiveness of such an examination, psychiatrist August Piper stated that "amytal's inhibition-lowering effects in no way prompt the subject to offer up true statements or memories."<ref name="salon.com">Template:Cite news</ref> Psychology TodayTemplate:'s Scott Linfield noted, as per Piper, that "there's good reason to believe that truth serums merely lower the threshold for reporting virtually all information, both true and false."<ref name="salon.com"/>
See alsoEdit
- Human experimentation
- Microexpression
- Narcotics
- Pharmacological torture
- Polygraph
- Project MKUltra
- Project Chatter
- Project Artichoke
- In vino veritas
ReferencesEdit
External linksEdit
- Template:Cite tech report
- Informal demonstration of thiopental (video), BBC, 4 October 2013.