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The allegations were horrific, yet the investigation had hit a brick wall. A 15-year-old Louisiana girl reported being kidnapped at gunpoint and raped. Police arrested the 24-year-old man she accused, and he sat in a jail cell for months. There was just one problem: He fiercely maintained his innocence, and not a shred of DNA, physical evidence or witness testimony tied him to the crime.
Desperate to break the stalemate, the local district attorney called in Chad Jeansonne, D.C.J. A detective with a neighboring police agency, Jeansonne was a certified examiner with the Computer Voice Stress Analyzer (CVSA) — a technology developed to detect deception by measuring inaudible, stress-induced vibrations in the human voice.
“I started to look at the facts of the case,” Jeansonne recalled, “and there were some things about it that were strange.”
The suspect readily agreed to a CVSA exam. As he answered questions into a microphone, the software analyzed his vocal patterns.
“He passed with flying colors,” Jeansonne said. “There was no deception in his chart, no physiological reactions — none. In fact, he thanked me for being there.”
Investigators then took an unusual step. With the DA’s backing, they asked the teen accuser to take the exam. Her charts told a vastly different story: “complete deception.”
Three days later, at an emergency juvenile court hearing, the truth came out. The teenager admitted she had fabricated the entire kidnapping and assault to cover up a potential pregnancy by someone else. After months behind bars, an innocent man walked free.
“At the end of the day, the CVSA exam was 100% correct,” said Jeansonne, now a forensic criminologist with the Alexandria Police Department in Louisiana with nearly 20 years of experience as a CVSA examiner. “After arresting a lot of people in my career, it felt really good to exonerate somebody who was falsely accused.”
Clearing the innocent to catch the guilty
In law enforcement, clearing the wrong suspect is just as critical as catching the right one. Every hour spent pursuing a false lead is an hour the real perpetrator remains on the street.
“One of the most important things is that CVSA can exonerate people very quickly,” Jeansonne noted, allowing detectives to immediately redirect their time and resources where they actually matter.
While traditional polygraphs require strapping a subject to a tangle of wires, blood pressure cuffs and sensors, CVSA requires only a microphone. As the subject speaks, the software detects microtremors — subtle, low-frequency vibrations in the muscles of the voice box that change when a person experiences the psychological stress of lying. The software generates visual charts a trained examiner interprets. While not standalone proof of guilt in court, it acts as a powerful compass for investigators.
Voice stress analysis has roots stretching back over 50 years, building on microtremor research by British neuroscientist Olof Lippold and early 1970s devices that relied on clunky reel-to-reel tapes. In the mid-1980s, former Indianapolis police officer Charles Humble, Ph.D. (hon.), revolutionized the field. Frustrated by how cumbersome early machines were, Humble replaced human guesswork and tape reels with computer algorithms, launching the CVSA in 1988.
Today, the technology is provided through NITV Federal Services, whose core system combines two critical elements:
- CVSA III: Introduced in 2019, the latest generation of the analyzer features an upgraded scoring algorithm that streamlines chart evaluation for examiners.
- Defense Barrier Removal (DBR): A proprietary, rapport-based interviewing technique developed by Humble and designed for both criminal interrogations and pre-employment background screenings.
The power of the setup: Securing confessions in the field
Although the manufacturer cites and accuracy rate of between 96%–98%, often the mere presence of the CVSA is enough to break a suspect’s resolve. When subjects realize their voice can betray their lies, many choose to confess before the test even begins.
That psychological leverage is backed by striking data. In a 2020 retrospective review published in the Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, researchers examined 82 men arrested by an Internet Crimes Against Children task force. In their initial police interviews, zero suspects admitted to hands-on abuse. Yet during the CVSA process, more than 40% confessed to hands-on abuse, and over 80% admitted to at least one sex crime. “Compellingly,” the authors said, “100% of voice stress analysis ‘stress indicated’ examinations resulted in verifiable disclosures (of victims and sex crimes).”1
Detective Allan O’Neill of the Kirkland Police Department in Washington has seen this play out firsthand over a decade of using the CVSA.
“Once they finish the training with NITV FS, they become excellent examiners — and ultimately better detectives.”
“Just having that computer set up and telling them how accurate it is can be enough,” O’Neill said. “You tell them, ‘If you’re not being honest with me, it’s going to show that.’ And a lot of times they’ll just say, ‘I did it. You don’t need to do that.’”
For O’Neill, the CVSA’s greatest advantage over the polygraph is tactical speed. A traditional polygraph often requires scheduling an appointment that can sometimes take weeks and lengthy on-scene prep — giving a suspect ample time to lawyer up or refuse to cooperate.
“With the tactical CVSAs I do, I can stand outside the interview van, have my computer ready to go, hop right in, set up and do the test,” O’Neill explained.
According to an 18-year field analysis of one examiner’s caseload, stress-indicated CVSA exams yielded a 96.4% confession rate.2 Overall, NITV Federal Services reports accuracy rates of between 96% and 98% when examiners use its FACT Plus scoring system.
Eliminating false anxiety
For any truth-verification test to work, one condition is non-negotiable: real-world stakes, known as ecological validity. NITV points out that external laboratory studies often fail to replicate field results because study volunteers face no real consequences for lying.
“You have to have that jeopardy,” said O’Neill. “In practice exams, if there’s no real jeopardy, you don’t get the full effect. But if someone’s sitting in a hot seat and has viewed images of children engaged in sexually explicit conduct, they’re going to have jeopardy, and if they’re lying about it, it’s going to show.”
However, examiners must carefully separate the stress of lying from the stress of being tested. This is where the polygraph often works against itself. Strapping hardware onto a suspect’s body naturally spikes their heart rate and anxiety, muddying the results.
“The CVSA is a much easier exam to conduct because we don’t have to touch them or connect them to wires that introduce tremendous anxiety,” Jeansonne explained. “That’s a variable we don’t want in the room. Instead, we do everything we can to put that person at ease, calm them and reassure them we’re only asking very specific questions.”
Because the technology relies heavily on human rapport and precise questioning, NITV FS recommends training experienced detectives who already know how to talk to people from all walks of life.
“Once they finish the training with NITV FS, they become excellent examiners — and ultimately better detectives,” Jeansonne added.
Proven results across 3,000+ agencies
Today, more than 3,000 law enforcement agencies rely on the CVSA as a faster, more cost-effective and less invasive alternative to the polygraph. In high-stakes, violent investigations, it provides the clarity detectives need to close cases with confidence.
“In any career, be it dentistry, carpentry or truth verification, there will be those who don’t support aspects of it because they don’t understand it,” Jeansonne said. “But when used correctly, the results are phenomenal. I have conducted close to 1,400 CVSA exams — including homicides, carjackings, burglaries and hundreds of child sexual assault cases. Upward of 98% have resulted in a confession or allowed us to connect a suspect to the crime through DNA or eyewitnesses that validated exactly what we saw in the CVSA charts.”
For more information, visit NITV Federal Services.
References
- Marigo J. Stathis, Maria M. Marinakis. “Shadows into light: The investigative utility of voice analysis with two types of online child-sex predators.” Journal of Child Sexual Abuse. January 2020. www.cvsa1.com/app/uploads/2022/08/Stathis-et-al-2020.pdf
- James L. Chapman, Marigo Stathis. “Field evaluation of effectiveness of VSA (voice stress analysis) technology in a US criminal justice setting.” Criminalistics and Court Expertise. 2012.
Computer Voice Stress Analyzer and CVSA are registered trademarks of NITV Federal Services.