Bob Hurt 2460 Persian Drive #70 Clearwater, Florida 33763 727 669 5511 http://bobhurt.

com

And, The Pantomimes of a Liar

The author renders a humorous examination of the nature of lies and their alternatives, and explains how to detect lies from the behavior (pantomimes) of liars.

An Inquiry into Lies and Liars

Bob Hurt

Is Your Word Your Bond?

An Inquiry into Lies and Liars
By Bob Hurt 6 August 2007, Revised 9 April 2012

One of my associates mused as follows in response to the comments about Federal Judges oaths:

Is not a bond the same as an oath? If my word is my bond am I not pledging my oath by virtue of my word (bond)?

The Value of Constitutional Loyalty Oaths

I dont think it much matters whether an oath stands equivalent to the bond of your word. Men and women generally revered God in the days of yore. They swore an oath in Gods name, or they just swore it. The oath meant something, and it thereby bound them to perform accordingly. Why? Because they feared that God would smite or punish them somehow if they violated the oath. Nowadays, you cant trust people, particularly those in government, to care about, honor, or even believe in God. And if they say they do, you cant trust them to mean they believe they have made a commitment to operate righteously as God does. They typically justify unrighteous behavior by saying Hey, nobodys perfect. So, what value has the oath of loyalty to the Constitution? I believe it has little value because violating the loyalty oath does not cause the violators to forfeit money or position. God certainly does not smite, punish, or strike violators dead. And, I know of no law that penalizes a violation of the loyalty oath.

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Furthermore, some groups of people, like fundamentalist Jews, may and do engage in ritual denials of oaths in advance of swearing them. Take, for example, the Kol Nidre solemn declaration of fundamentalist Jews a Yom Kippur every late September/early October:

"All personal vows we are likely to make, all personal oaths and pledges we are likely to take between this Yom Kippur and the next Yom Kippur, we publicly renounce. Let them all be relinquished and abandoned, null and void, neither firm nor established. Let our personal vows, pledges and oaths be considered neither vows nor pledges nor oaths."

How can "we the people" possibly trust the integrity of those who foreswear their oaths in advance? Religion pundits might claim they mean that Kol Nidre declaration refers only to personal oaths like "I swear I'll stop smoking," But in reality they have no idea what sincerity lurks in the hearts of the members of their flocks. Kol Nidre could apply to all oaths, personal, impersonal, formal, informal, large, small, significant, and insignificant. In other words, you cannot trust people who foreswear their oaths in advance to adhere to oaths they swear subsequently. And, interestingly, devout Ashkenazi Jews often wind up in leadership positions in courts and elsewhere in government because they have the highest average IQ (115) of any genetic group on the planet. So the meaning and sincerity of their oath-taking has salient relevance to their performance of duties according to law and rules of procedure.

Why We Cannot Trust Judges and Prosecutors

From practical experience, how do I know you cant trust judges and other officials to abide by their loyalty oaths? Simple. I monitor their

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behavior. Start attending court hearings and you will conclude as I have that most judges break their loyalty oaths several times a day. We have daily living proof from the behavior of judges in all levels of courts that their word does not constitute their bond. And you will note that many states (including Florida) do not require judges to have surety bonds to give people a modicum of confidence that the judges will abide by their oaths. Why do judges lie and disobey their oaths so much? Because they enjoy judicial immunity that no constitution grants them. The Judicial Qualification Commissions have judges and lawyers in them who overlord the citizen appointees, and they virtually never discipline judges widely reputed to flout the law and rules. Furthermore, citizens find it virtually impossible to get the House Committee on the Judiciary to impeach "bad" judges. The newspapers refuse to publish negative stories about all but the worst of judges. Prosecutors won't prosecute them. And grand juries, usually perverted by prosecutors, won't indict them. Thus, judges do lie and disobey their oaths because they can get away with doing it. In summary, I have concluded that most judges, having no check or balance on their behavior, lie, and many lie a lot. Also, many prosecutors enjoy qualified immunity, and as prosecutors their winning has greater importance to them than their honesty and integrity. They will typically say or do anything to win their case because they know that the law means only what the judge says it means. They don't want to trust that they will win a case on its merits, so they lie to the defendant in order to coax out a plea bargain agreement. And because so many defense attorneys plea bargain their clients into a conviction, they never become competent litigators. Because so many prosecutors face off against incompetent defense counsels, prosecutors generally win, but still never develop competence. In effect the defendants become victims of a comedy or errors practiced by figurative dunces. So, I believe ALL prosecutors lie more than judges do, in other words, ALL the time, or whenever it suits their purpose. And, horror of horrors, many

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prosecutors go on to become judges. They start lying early in their careers, carry it over into judgeships, and never stop. Since they lie so much in public, surely they have no compunction about doing it at home. So, I have often wondered why their children and spouses don't kill them in their sleep. I realize my reaction to judge/prosecutor lies and flouting of loyalty oaths seems extreme. But I can think of no liar more horrid, intolerable, and deserving of excision from the planet than a lying judge, and next to that, a lying lawyer.

Lying, According to Mark Twain

A person saying My word is my bond signifies the intent to say and obey the truth of that word. That statement implies such an intent and behavior since the time of accountability or of having made the first moral decision in childhood. It seems somewhat equivalent to saying May God strike me dead if Im lying or if I fail to abide by what I said. That person means: I have lived my whole life since a child saying the truth, and obeying what I said. I shall continue doing so. Mark Twain would take exception to such a grandiose statement. He believed everyone a liar. He even wrote an essay about it in 1885 - On the Decay of the Art of Lying. There he quoted Benjamin Disraeli (actually, Lord Leonard Henry Courtney) as referring to the three kinds of liars liars, damned liars, and statistics. Mark Twain alleged that everyone tells at least little white lies. Since we cant stop lying, he asserted, we should lie more artfully, thoughtfully, and judiciously according to these rules: to lie with a good object, and not an evil one; to lie for others' advantage, and not our own; to lie healingly, charitably, humanely, not cruelly, hurtfully, maliciously; to lie gracefully and graciously, not awkwardly and clumsily; to lie firmly, frankly, squarely, with head erect, not haltingly, tortuously, with pusillanimous mien, as being ashamed of our high calling.

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I Side with Twain

I feel rather inclined to side with Twain. We should not claim my word is my bond, for we MUST sometimes lie in the name of nobility and righteousness. In fact, as any politician would tell you, ones profession can require one to lie quite often. For clarification, consider the following List of Kinds of Lies. I imagine it could easily grow twice its number of lie types. All of the items on it constitute lies of one kind or another.

Partial List of Lies

1. ambiguities 2. amplifications 3. baloneys 4. beatings around the bush 5. bilgewaters 6. boshes 7. cons 8. deceptions 9. diplomacies 10. dishonesties 11. distortions 12. drools 13. equivocations 14. evasions 15. exaggerations 16. fables 17. fabrications 18. falsifications 19. fibs 20. fictions 21. figures of speech 22. flim-flams

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23. frauds 24. games 25. generalizations 26. half-truths 27. humbugs 28. hyperboles 29. libels 30. lies (damned) 31. lies (white) 32. lies 33. malapropisms 34. mendacities 35. mental reservations 36. misdirections 37. misinformations 38. myths 39. omissions 40. palteries 41. perjuries 42. pretentions 43. prevarications 44. slanders 45. songs and dances 46. spoofs 47. statistics 48. stories 49. stretchings of the truth 50. tales 51. taradiddles 52. tommyrots 53. twaddles

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Why I Side with Mark Twain

As I suggested when I sided with Twain, I dont mean to imply that one can never justify a lie. A lie can save relationships, lives, or perhaps a civilization. But however justified, it still amounts to a lie. And even though statistics constitute mathematical lies, they also provide a way of analyzing facts so as to discover their general nature. And that kind of lie, a generalization, highlights truth to prevent people from equating an exception with its rule. As Harvard professor emeritus Frederick Mosteller pointed out, "It is easy to lie with statistics, but it is easier to lie without them." Statistics can keep some liars somewhat honest.

The Pantomimes of Liars

How to Read a Liar Like a Book
By Bob Hurt, 25 June 2009

The other night after Maria went to bed I watched Quentin Tarantino's movie True Romance, an action-packed flick about unlikely romance, adventure, mob violence, and a one-time-only drug deal that got a lot of people killed. The cast of characters included Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette, Gary Oldman, Dennis Hopper, Christopher Walken, and James Gandolfini, and a few other notable actors. Yeah, I loved the show. I have seen it several times and I look forward to the next time. Two thumbs up. In the film Slater, a comic book store manager, meets Arquette, a hooker, in the movie theater. They fall in love, get married, and he goes to her pimp, Oldman, to collect her personal belongings. He gets into a huge fight and kills Oldman and his minions. A prostitute hands him her suitcase and he goes home. He discovers that one suitcase contains a lot of bagged white powder. The couple stops to see Slater's dad, Hopper, to borrow some traveling money, then rushes off to LA to sell the drugs and enjoy a honeymoon.

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In the next scene, a thug for Mafia capo Walken slugs Hopper in the face when he arrives at his trailer house. Walken asks Slater's whereabouts. Oldman had taken Slater's driver license before Slater killed him, and Slater had left it at the crime scene. Hopper denies knowing anything. After tying up Hopper, Walken tries to torture Hopper into divulging Slater's and Arquette's whereabouts and destination. Hopper then admits that they had stopped by but denies knowing their whereabouts and destination, whereupon Walken says to Hopper...

"Sicilians are great liars. The best in the world. I'm Sicilian. My father was the world heavy-weight champion of Sicilian liars. From growing up with him I learned the pantomime. There are seventeen different things a guy can do when he lies to give himself away. A guy's got seventeen pantomimes. A woman's got twenty, but a guy's got seventeen... but, if you know them, like you know your own face, they beat lie detectors all to hell. Now, what we got here is a little game of show and tell. You don't wanna show me nothin', but you're tellin me everything. I know you know where they are, so tell me before I do some damage you won't walk away from."

According to WordWeb, pantomime means "A performance using gestures and body movements without words." It seems to me that all good lawyers and students of the law should know these pantomimes by heart. It really can help when interrogating witnesses. In fact, it can help anyone when interacting with people in general. So I ask: What ARE these pantomimes? Before I get into the answer, I point out that I consider all lie-detecting techniques a highly subjective art form. During an actual interrogation, one might want to tell the subject something similar to what Walken said about

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the pantomimes and let the subject know that his reaction to the interrogation has already revealed some of them. This might just demoralize the subject sufficiently to get the subject to start telling the truth. I did a little digging and came up with the liar pantomimes below. Incidentally, I believe Tarantino made up that nonsense about women having twenty pantomimes and men having only seventeen. As you will see, I found more than a score, and some I could subdivide even more.

LIAR PANTOMIMES
1. A liar will limit or stiffen physical expression, with few arm and hand movements. The liar will move hand, arm, and leg toward his own body in order to take up less space and become harder to see. A liar will avoid making eye contact with you when lying to you. While the liar may have no ability to hold a gaze for any length of time, a sociopath liar might look you in the eyes without difficulty for a long time. A liar tends to touch the face, throat & mouth, and touch or scratch the nose or behind their ear. A liar will not likely touch the chest/heart with an open hand. The liar covers the mouth as if to cover the lie. A liar botches the timing between emotions gestures/expressions and words. Example: Someone says, I love it! when receiving a gift and then smiles after making that statement, rather then at the same time the statement is made. Microexpressions may flash on the liar's face that do not comport with the liar's verbal responses. Gestures/expressions dont match the verbal statement, such as frowning when saying I love you. The liar limits expressions to mouth movements, instead of using the whole face,when faking emotions (like happy, surprised, sad, awe, ). Normally a non-liar involves the whole face when expressing emotion - jaw/cheek movement, eyes and forehead push down, etc.

2.

3.

4.

5. 6.

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7.

8.

9. 10.

11. 12. 13.

14.

15.

16.

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17.

A guilty person gets defensive. An innocent person will often go on the offensive. Or, the accused may become the accuser by pointing the finger and projecting the misdeed elsewhere. The liar may overreact by immediately behaving angry and defensive, perhaps to try to force a change of subject or to make the person submit to the liar's story. A liar feels and acts uncomfortable facing his questioner/accuser and may turn his head or body away. The liar may fidget a lot and generally look uncomfortable. A liar might unconsciously place objects (book, coffee cup, etc.) between the two of you. A liar will use your words to make an answer to the question. When asked, Did you eat the last cookie? The liar answers, No, I did not eat the last cookie, or "Are you asking me if I ate that cookie?" A statement with a contraction has a greater likelihood of truthful content: I didnt do it instead of I did not do it Liars sometimes avoid lying by not making direct statements. They imply answers instead of denying something directly. The guilty person may speak more than normally, adding unnecessary details to convince you the liar feels uncomfortable with silence or pauses in the conversation. The liar may start talking way too fast or completely change pitch or tone of voice. A liar may leave out pronouns and speak in a monotonous tone. In a truthful statement the liar will emphasize the pronoun as much as or more than the rest of the words in a statement. A liar may garble words or speak them softly, and make errors in grammar and syntax. In other-words, the liar will muddle sentences rather than emphasize them. A liar will feel a desire to leave the area so as to escape further notice or scrutiny, and may look toward possible escape routes or fabricate an excuse like "I have to go to the bathroom again." A liar will often exhibit different mannerisms while lying than during normal conversation - any slight changes can have

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18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

significance. For example, a person trying to remember a detail might normally look upward, but look downward when lying.you fare best if you know how the subject behaves during normal conversation before beginning the interrogation. In other words, soften the subject up, put the subject at ease, and notice how the subject normally acts. Then, when you discern any differences during interrogation, those differences constitute clues that the subject might want to hide the truth. A liar will willingly and with relief change the subject, while a nonliar would try to return to the original subject. A liar may avoid the subject by making sarcastic or humorous remarks. A liar tends to blink frequently as though unconsciously hiding thoughts, but revealing them instead. Note that some people blink a lot normally when not lying. The liar's eyebrows become raised. This by itself does not prove lying, but it tends to signify defensiveness. A liar aware of the tendency to blink a lot may raise the eyebrows in order to compensate. People seem to have trouble avoiding this indicator to lying. The liar may play dumb. What are you talking about? or Why would you say that? and of course looking appropriately shocked and confused. The liar, needing more time to think, may stammer and pause in between comments as if trying to gather thoughts. Look for a subtle "thinking time" delay between asking the question and obtaining the answer - the delay can suggest lying. The liar may sweat more than normal during questioning.

An Inquiry into Lies and Liars

I'd love to give proper credit to the tireless researchers in homes, businesses, universities, and research laboratories throughout the world who studied human behavior and documented these liar "tells." But frankly I don't feel the urge to research that. Just remember that Mark Twains reminder that three kinds of liars exist - liars, damned liars, and statistics. And statistics really beat all the alternative forms.

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Summary and Conclusion

Dont worry. Even bad things like lies can serve good purposes. However, statistically speaking, I guess every human who ever lived did at least one of the things in the above List of Kinds of Lies. And that means no mans word is his bond.

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Bob Hurt Contact: Email bh f t Blogs: 1 2 3 Law: E-letter Subscribe Donate Learn the Law 2460 Persian Drive #70, Clearwater, Florida 33763 727 669 5511

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bob Hurt lives with his wife Maria in sunny Florida. He spends his days strumming classical and country guitar, singing, studying law, writing commentaries and articles, watching a little tube, hugging Maria, and fielding email and phone calls. You may call or write Bob, or send him a candygram. And you may donate generously via the above link or http://bobhurt.com/lawdonation.htm.

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