ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores the use of torture as a form of lie detection in practices of 'trial by ordeal'. It provides an overview of the tripartite heuristic used to explain the legal status of the polygraph machine in US criminal courts, that it is either: inadmissible; admissible with prior-stipulation; or admissible without prior-stipulation. The book examines how ontological uncertainties in polygraph research and practices are negotiated in legal settings by reference to broader techno-political currents in the United States. It explains how the polygraph machine is used in police interrogations of criminal suspects and witnesses. The book explores the use of the polygraph at the socio-legal periphery of the criminal trial, namely in probation and treatment programmes for sex offenders. It reviews the ways in which uncertainty in lie detection has figured in its techno-legal configurations within socio-legal situations.
