Sex offenders can now be subject to an examination by a computer voice stress analyzer as part of their post-release supervision to determine their veracity, according to the federal court in the Northern District of New York and Chief Judge Norman A. Mordue. Mordue ruled that a CVSA test is analogous to polygraph examinations, which have been accepted by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals as a way to monitor the activities of those under post-release supervision. Testimony before Mordue indicated that approximately 1,800 law enforcement agencies in the U.S. have the devices available for use, most of which were manufactured by the National Institute of Truth Verification, a Palm Beach, Fla.-based company that has been producing the devices since 1989.
United States v. Johnson, 446 F.2d 272 (2nd Cir. 2006), held that both the CVSA and polygraphs were reliable, that they could be validly related to the post-release supervision of an offender and that they did not deprive a defendant of his rights under the Fifth Amendment.
Advocates of voice stress analysis technology state that research demonstrated that CVSA devices can detect otherwise inaudible voice inflections in responses to questions that can indicate whether a speaker is telling the truth.
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