Document D
The Results of Ernest Medina's Lie Detector Test
Remarks of Chief Prosecutor William Eckhardt
I became very concerned about that as I looked at it, and as time progressed, F. Lee Bailey, who defended Captain Medina, requested a polygraph. Polygraphs are made up of two parts: You question someone, and then you test whether their responses are true or false about the best way you know how to do it on a machine. The law is that what they tell you is admissible in court, but the machine is not. We wanted the answers to about sixty-five questions, and we worked for about four days to see what answers we could get. We used the president of the Polygraph Association. He was the most reputable and the best polygraph examiner in the United States, if not in the world. Over a series of weekends, we put Medina on the box as they say, and that is what I need to talk about in relation to the order.
Two questions were pertinent. Medina was truthful in response to this question: "Did you intentionally infer"---note all the connotation to that as to whether he had ordered directly or showed a want to do it or not---"to your men that they were to kill unarmed, unresisting noncombatants?" His answer was no. That was truthful. The next question was what did he know. We did a "peak of tension" test. It is the way, for example, that policemen find dead bodies. Basically, you hook somebody up, and as you move across a map, the person without saying anything reacts. The question was put to him: "Did you know that your men were killing unarmed, unresisting noncombatants?" We listed ninety-minute segments of the day before, the day of, and the day after the massacre. It was flat for the day before, but between seven-thirty and nine in the morning of the massacre, the needle went off the chart, not reacted, went off the chart. It went down and then went off. Medina told us, orally, that he learned about this when he, for the first time, saw a group of bodies at the edge of the village between ten and ten-thirty. The law is that you can use, as we did, that particular statement of time. We couldn't use the polygraph chart, but the government's duty was clear. No one knows what happened, but what probably happened was that this group got out of control and he refused to stop it.
Questions:
1. Captain outranks Lieutenant in the military. Why was Lt. Calley punished and Cpt. Medina was not? Is this fair? Why or why not?
2. Should Cpt. Medina be punished because he was acting on orders as well? Where do you draw the line in the chain of command to determine who was ultimately responsible?
2. Do you think Cpt. Medina lied about his role in My Lai? Cite evidence.
The Results of Ernest Medina's Lie Detector Test
Remarks of Chief Prosecutor William Eckhardt
I became very concerned about that as I looked at it, and as time progressed, F. Lee Bailey, who defended Captain Medina, requested a polygraph. Polygraphs are made up of two parts: You question someone, and then you test whether their responses are true or false about the best way you know how to do it on a machine. The law is that what they tell you is admissible in court, but the machine is not. We wanted the answers to about sixty-five questions, and we worked for about four days to see what answers we could get. We used the president of the Polygraph Association. He was the most reputable and the best polygraph examiner in the United States, if not in the world. Over a series of weekends, we put Medina on the box as they say, and that is what I need to talk about in relation to the order.
Two questions were pertinent. Medina was truthful in response to this question: "Did you intentionally infer"---note all the connotation to that as to whether he had ordered directly or showed a want to do it or not---"to your men that they were to kill unarmed, unresisting noncombatants?" His answer was no. That was truthful. The next question was what did he know. We did a "peak of tension" test. It is the way, for example, that policemen find dead bodies. Basically, you hook somebody up, and as you move across a map, the person without saying anything reacts. The question was put to him: "Did you know that your men were killing unarmed, unresisting noncombatants?" We listed ninety-minute segments of the day before, the day of, and the day after the massacre. It was flat for the day before, but between seven-thirty and nine in the morning of the massacre, the needle went off the chart, not reacted, went off the chart. It went down and then went off. Medina told us, orally, that he learned about this when he, for the first time, saw a group of bodies at the edge of the village between ten and ten-thirty. The law is that you can use, as we did, that particular statement of time. We couldn't use the polygraph chart, but the government's duty was clear. No one knows what happened, but what probably happened was that this group got out of control and he refused to stop it.
Questions:
1. Captain outranks Lieutenant in the military. Why was Lt. Calley punished and Cpt. Medina was not? Is this fair? Why or why not?
2. Should Cpt. Medina be punished because he was acting on orders as well? Where do you draw the line in the chain of command to determine who was ultimately responsible?
2. Do you think Cpt. Medina lied about his role in My Lai? Cite evidence.