Charles Gibson interviews
Dr. Lawrence Farwell
Charles
Gibson:
We're going to show you a new
technology. I guess you could call it
a new kind of lie detector test, but
it's far more sophisticated than that
and it uses brainwaves instead of
physical cues like pulse and breathing
rate. And it's now become admissible
in some courts in the country. It
really is as I said absolutely
revolutionary technology and ABC's Bob
Woodruff is here to tell us about how
this works, Bob.
Bob
Woodruff: It's very new to a lot
of us, Charlie the technology
called Brain Fingerprinting
is partly responsible for
freeing a man convicted of murder
from an Iowa prison after 24 years
and it may be part of an appeal
for a convict on Oklahoma's death
row whose case will be heard by
the US Supreme Court any day now.
How often have we heard
these words from law enforcement
officials, "These are details known
only to the perpetrators." The
latest technology in forensic science
uses those details to prove a
suspect's guilt or innocence.
Developed by Harvard trained Dr.
Lawrence Farwell, Brain Fingerprinting
uses brainwaves to measure what Dr.
Farwell: calls the "Aha!" of
recognition. When the brain recognizes
a word or picture it releases an
involuntary wave called a P300-MERMER. It's
now being used to determine whether
suspects were ever at the scene of the
crime.
Dr. Farwell: "If the
person knows the specific details
about the crime, he gets a recognition
response which we can measure in the
brainwaves when those correct details
about the crime are flashed on the
screen."
Bob Woodruff: According to
Farwell, and his brainwave results,
Terry Harrington didn't have the
details of the 1978 murder he was
convicted of stored in his brain. An
Iowa judge allowed the new technology
into evidence in Harrington's appeal,
and now he's a free man. In
Missouri JB Grinder confessed and was
sentenced to life after a P300-MERMER
revealed he did have special knowledge
of the 1984 rape murder of which he
was accused.
Now Farwell's science
could save the life of Jimmy Ray
Slaughter on Oklahoma's death row
for the murder of his girlfriend
and their infant daughter.
Farwell tested
Slaughter on details Slaughter
claimed he didn't know.
Jimmy Ray Slaughter "The
room where the adult victim's body was
located, the position on the floor
where the adult victim's body was
lying…"
Bob Woodruff: When Farwell
questioned Slaughter on the location
of the bodies at the murder scene and
the position of the woman's body on
the floor, there was no brainwave of
recognition.
Dr. Farwell: We have at
least a 99% confidence that you don't
have that information in your brain. So
what does that mean to you?
Jimmy Ray Slaughter: It
means that what I've said all along is
true.
Dr. Farwell: And what
have you said all along?
Jimmy
Ray Slaughter: That I was
innocent…Sorry (sobs)…
Charles Gibson: Now it's
interesting the test may come too late
for Slaughter's Supreme Court appeal,
but the defense is hoping to use it to
reopen the case in Oklahoma. And
we are joined this morning by
neuroscientist and inventor of Brain
Fingerprinting Dr. Larry Farwell. Good
to have you with us.
Dr. Farwell: Good to be
here.
Charles Gibson: Now I want
to get some image of how this works.
When they do lie detector tests, they
react to sweat on the palms, to
heartbeat, to pulse, etc., but really
what you're doing is going back to the
origin of all those things, which is
the brainwaves.
Dr. Farwell: Right. We
measure information in the brain. We
don't measure whether they're anxious
or not, whether they're lying or not,
we simply measure a brain response
that tells us if that information
we're flashing on the screen is
something they recognize as
significant, so we can know if they
know those details about the crime.
Charles Gibson: This is so
new that if you introduce it in a
court case don't you really in effect
have to educate the judge as to what
it is?
Dr.
Farwell: Yes we do have to educate
the judge and of course that's what
we do. We
were successful in the state of Iowa
in the Harrington case in achieving
admissibility for Brain
Fingerprinting.
Charles
Gibson: Have some judges said "Don't
bother me with this, I don't
understand it"?
Dr. Farwell: Not yet. I
think we'll continue to be successful
because the science is very solid. I
think everyone acknowledges the
science is very solid behind the
technique.
Charles Gibson: So if you
showed me, for instance if I was
strapped up to this thing, and you
showed me a picture of three people,
and I knew one of them.
Dr. Farwell: Right
Charles Gibson: And you
didn't know which one of the three I
knew, would you be able to tell right
away which one I knew?
Dr. Farwell: Yes,
absolutely.
Charles
Gibson: Because I would have some
sort of a brainwave reaction this
P300 – what did he say?
Dr. Farwell: Right, this
P300-MERMER response. When you see
something that's significant, that you
recognize as significant, the brain
goes "Aha!" and we can pick up a
pattern from the brain that we analyze
with a computer and we can say "Yes,
he recognizes that" or "No, he
doesn't."
Charles Gibson: All right. Is
there some way that the test might be
invalidated. For
instance, let's say somebody when they
committed the crime was on drugs, and
therefore doesn't remember or has no
remembrance of where he was at the
time, so he wouldn't necessarily react
to the position of the bodies in the
room or whatever.
Dr. Farwell: Well, JB
Grinder, turned out to be a serial
killer, he was on drugs and alcohol at
the time of the crime, he was actually
on therapeutic drugs, psychotropic
drugs at the time of the Brain
Fingerprinting test. We
got very good results from him. People
remember the very major events in
their life. Even
a serial killer only does it a few
times, and it's a big event. So
that tends to have a very solid record
in the brain. We
can detect that.
Charles Gibson: Could you
also use it to determine, because
there's a lot of controversy for
instance about people who have
repressed memory about child abuse. Could
you use it to determine whether or not
they had actually been abused?
Dr. Farwell: We
could use it but the way we would use
it is not on the victim or alleged
victim, we would use it on the
suspect. We'd
get all the details about the alleged
crime from the person who believed
they'd been abused,
Charles Gibson: And then
do it on the alleged abuser.
Dr. Farwell: Right. And
we'd see if he had that record stored
in his brain or not. We
could detect that.
Charles
Gibson: Hmm. How
widely, how many applications of
this, how long have you been doing
research on it, how widely have you
tried to use it.
Dr. Farwell: Well, I
invented it more than 15 years ago,
and I actually withheld the technology
from the public for 15 years to do
more research. We
did research with the FBI, the CIA,
the US Navy, the government spend over
a million dollars on the research on
Brain Fingerprinting. We showed not
only in the laboratory but in over 100
actual real-life situations that the
technology was effective and we have
ever yet to ever get a wrong answer. It's
been correct in every case so far.
Charles Gibson: All right,
well very interesting to have you with
us, and I'd love to try this out. Can
we do this sometime, do a
demonstration on the air?
Dr. Farwell: Sure, we can
do that.
Charles Gibson:
All right, we'll get
you back and we will do that. Appreciate
it.
