What Is Truth?

It's a common image: a witness taking the stand in a courtroom is asked to place his left hand on the Bible and raise his right hand.

"Do you promise to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?" the bailiff asks.

If the witness were being entirely truthful, he or she would often say, "No."

"In the courtroom, nobody wants truth," Ron Slay said. "Everybody has their own agenda. No one is seeking a fair-minded truth. Everything is slanted."

Slay owns Western Security Consultants, a Las Vegas firm that administers polygraph tests. His job is to determine if someone is lying or telling the truth.

"Some studies of psychopathy (mental disorders) and social behavior say (lying) is increasing as a norm of society," Slay said. "We are exposed to them, always, in the court. It is part of the system. The person is innocent because police made a mistake in the investigation."

Slay says society as a whole is being affected by what goes on in the courtroom, where truth often is irrelevant to whether a criminal escapes punishment.

"When I worked for the (Clark County) Family Court 20 years ago, three young boys got into trouble. One of the boys came from a very good family who said, You're going to go down there and tell the truth and take your punishment,'" Slay recalled. "The other two said they were not admitting anything and they wanted a public defender they got off.

"I think a strong case can be made for saying that we (society) are very ineffective at punishing the remorseless, defiant criminals. We have been so ineffective at doing that, that we need to punish those that we can in order to compensate for it so we punish those who are remorseful and truthful. Remorseful and truthful people are punished by our system to a far greater degree, while the really bad ones are getting away with their crimes."

The lesson is not lost on society in general, Slay notes.

"The Air Force does the same thing," he said. "They will gather a roomful of people and tell them the best chance they have of getting a wonderful, high-level, preferred job is being truthful.

"Then they interview candidates one at a time. 'Have you smoked marijuana?' 'Yes, sir!' 'You're out of here! Next!' 'Have you smoked marijuana?' and the next one looks the interviewer in the eye and sincerely says 'No, sir! Never!' and lies about it with great sincerity, but he gets the job."

Such behavior is not limited to any single facet of society.

"That's happening everywhere," Slay said. "It's happening with people who are applying for military jobs, with police jobs, with all kinds of jobs."

Slay said what worries him about the proliferation of lying is that it hurts people who are sincere and truthful.

"Society would be better off, in things like courtrooms and employment and many other areas of our lives, if sincerity and truthfulness and remorse were actually rewarded," Slay said. "But people are learning the hard way not to be truthful."

Slay said a phrase he routinely hears is, "You would be a fool to tell the truth."

"A woman confessed to me the other day. She was in tears. She said, 'My attorney's going to be so mad at me -- I told the truth.' "