A Parrot Or A Lie Detector?
‘… We Admonish The Witnesses’
(Sanhedrin 29a)
Our Mishna advises that to interrogate witnesses, we bring them into a room and admonish them (i.e., we instill a degree of fear in them). Are sources of testimony always influenced by an official admonition? Can testimony be derived from sources other than human witnesses?
The tannaim disagree in the Mishna Sotah 31a as to what is the halacha of a woman whose husband made a kinuy (warning) for her, and then he heard a rumor that after the kinuy she had gone into seclusion with the named man. According to R. Yehoshua, as long as two witnesses did not testify about her being secluded, the husband does not need to divorce her. R. Eliezer disagrees and maintains that two witnesses are not necessary and “even if he heard from a flying bird, he must divorce her and give her a kesubah.”
Unusual Testimony
Rashi (s.v. afilu) explains that when R. Eliezer mentions a “flying bird,” he means that in this instance we can accept testimony even from a slave or a relative, though normally testimony from such people is not accepted. The Rambam (in his commentary on the Mishna) explains more literally that R. Eliezer means “even if he [the husband] heard from a bird’s chirping.” The Tiferes Yisrael (in his commentary on the Mishna) interprets “a flying bird” to be a papagia, a parrot which can repeat words that people say. We assume that if a parrot reports the wife’s seclusion, it is mimicking what it overheard from a person, and even this requires the husband to divorce his wife.
Not Relying On Lie Detectors In Gittin And Kiddushin
After the invention of the polygraph, commonly known as the lie detector, litigants in court cases often have asked dayanim of batei din to use this device to verify the claims at issue. Can beis din force a defendant to undergo such a test to validate or refute his claims? What if the other party voluntarily took the test already and the results showed that he was not lying? The question of relying on a polygraph and formulating a p’sak based on its results is especially complicated with respect to monetary cases or halachos of kiddushin and gittin, where the Torah requires having two witnesses. To help understand this question we should understand how a polygraph works.
How A Polygraph Works
A pneumograph tube is fastened around the subject’s chest to test his respiration, a blood pressure-pulse cuff is strapped around the arm, and electrodes are placed on the fingers and surfaces of the hand. Pens record impulses on moving graph paper and these parallel graphs are then correlated and interpreted to determine whether the subject is lying. When a person tells a lie, certain body changes occur: he swallows his saliva, his mouth is dry, his blood pressure rises, he sweats and blushes, he avoids looking straight in the interrogator’s eyes, and when he finishes lying, a sigh of relief can be discerned. For most people, the physiological phenomena chosen for recording are not subject to voluntary control and this test is 80 to 95 percent successful in determining whether a person under interrogation is lying.
Experts say that the results of such testing are not based only on what the machine records. They also take into account the investigator’s personal observations of the subject’s general behavior during the test and beforehand during the preliminary interview with him. Another factor is background information on the subject that the interrogator has from others.
In light of all the above, poskim (Tzitzis Eliezer 16:47 and Ba’er Moshe 7:79) have ruled that since the results of the polygraph test do not unequivocally show whether a person is lying, but are only an estimation, and furthermore, since the end results are determined together with the examiner’s impression, the results are considered only an estimation upon which we cannot make any halachic decision.
The Gemara (Shavuos 34a) tells us that Shimon Ben Shetach saw a person running after another person into an abandoned house. Shimon Ben Shetach ran after them and saw the pursuer holding a sword dripping with blood and the one he had been chasing was now mortally wounded and bleeding profusely. Nonetheless, according to halacha, it was impossible to declare with certainty that the pursuer was the murderer and Shimon Ben Shetach’s testimony was only considered an estimation. If so, certainly for money matters and cases of gittin and kiddushin, we cannot rely on a polygraph whose results are only estimation.
A Lie Detector 2,800 Years Ago
Rabbi Eliezer Waldenberg, zt”l (Tzitzis Eliezer ibid.) writes, “Who is greater for us than that Shlomo HaMelech, the wisest of all men, who wanted to rule on monetary affairs even without witnesses (Rosh Hashana 21b)?” We learn in the Zohar (Parashas Yisro 78a) that Shlomo, in his great wisdom, invented a lie detector that he connected to his throne. The Zohar says, “When anyone would touch it and lie, the figures of the animals of the throne would shake and Shlomo would know that he was lying.” That is, the wheels of the throne would begin to move and set in motion the animals that were in the throne. The Gemara (ibid.) tells us that a bas kol was heard, announcing that even so, we cannot make any decision according to Shlomo’s throne. Only the testimony of two kosher witnesses can be accepted.
