ABSTRACT
Initial polygraph cases in the USA presented a mix of success and failure for its developers. Together these first explorations of lie detection's legal relevance helped forge some of the tools which, in subsequent decades, would be used to exclude the device from criminal courts. The state courts have amassed a variety of tools to keep polygraph evidence out of the criminal jury trial, which is termed as the 'exclusionary toolkit'. The 'practical limitations' tool has, in part, become an effective item in the toolkit, for it can also be used in conjunction with one of the most powerful of strategies for fending off the lie detector: the use of the 'protect the jury' argument. The exclusionary strategies adopted in the trial courts are co-produced with the admissibility strategies developed outside of them, generating a kind of polygraph arms race.
