As everyone knows, polygraphs are inadmissible in court.  While there are some who swear by them, when properly administered and limited in their use, they have never risen to the level of certainty necessary to become absolute and irrefutable, like say little black boxes that provide conclusive proof of blood alcohol content even though they are replete with problems.

But polygraphs are so yesterday.  As Adam Kolber reveals at PrawfsBlawg, the newest, bestest, coolest has just made its debut in Pune, Maharashtra, India.  It’s brain-based lie detection called the Brain Electrical Oscillations Signature test, or BEOS.

The test was based on electroencephalography and appears to be related to so-called “brain fingerprinting”  technology developed by Lawrence Farwell in the United States.

But it’s not like anybody actually believes it works.  Except in India, where a woman was convicted of murder based on it.  From the International Herald Tribune :

The various technologies, generally regarded as promising but unproved, have yet to be widely accepted as evidence – except in India, where in recent years judges have begun to admit brain scans. But it was only in June, in a murder case in Pune, in Maharashtra State, that a judge explicitly cited a scan as proof that the suspect’s brain held ”experiential knowledge” about the crime that only the killer could possess, sentencing her to life in prison.

Psychologists and neuroscientists in the United States, which has been at the forefront of brain-based lie detection, variously called the Indian application of the technology to legal cases ”fascinating,” ”ridiculous,” ”chilling” and ”unconscionable.”

So how does BEOS works?

This latest Indian attempt at getting past criminals’ natural defenses begins with an electroencephalogram, or EEG, in which electrodes are placed on the head to measure electrical waves. The suspect sits in silence, eyes shut. An investigator reads aloud details of the crime – as prosecutors see it – and the resulting brain images are processed using software made in Bangalore.

The software tries to detect whether, when the crime’s details are recited, the brain lights up in specific regions – the areas that, according to the technology’s inventors, show measurable changes when experiences are relived, their smells and sounds summoned back to consciousness. The technology claims to be able to distinguish between memories of a deed merely witnessed and a deed actually done.

Sounds very scientific, doesn’t it?  And it’s not like the Indians don’t know their way around technology.  Yet, the test has never been peer reviewed or replicated, and according to an academic in the United States who has reviewed the literature, it looks “shaky”.

That didn’t stop an Indian court from convicting a woman for murder based upon it, however.  And it looks like the Brits think it may serve as a handy-dandy tool in the post 9/11 war on everything.

”According to the cases that have been presented to me, BEOS has clearly demonstrated its utility in providing admissible evidence that has been used to assist in the conviction of defendants in court,” Keith Ashcroft, a frequent expert witness in the British courts, said in an e-mail message.

And if it’s okey-dokey with the Brits, it’s just a hop, skip and jump over the pond to American courts.  While we may not see BEOS in a court near you anytime soon, don’t be surprised when they start hooking electrodes to your clients’ head and tell him a little story to see if he has some “experiential knowledge” buzzing around in there.

Sounds crazy?  Well, if it’s good enough for Maharashtra, what makes you think it’s not good enough for you?