Townsend v. Sain, that confessions produced as a result of ingestion of truth serum were "unconstitutionally coerced" and therefore inadmissible. The viability of forensic evidence produced from truth sera has been addressed in lower courts – judges and expert witnesses have generally agreed that they are not reliable for lie detection. In 1967, Perry Russo was administered sodium pentothal for interrogation by District Attorney Jim Garrison in the investigation of JFK's assassination. More recently, a judge approved the use of narcoanalysis in the 2012 Aurora, Colorado shooting trial to evaluate whether James Eagan Holmes's state of mind was valid for an insanity plea. Judge William Sylvester ruled that prosecutors would be allowed to interrogate Holmes "under the influence of a medical drug designed to loosen him up and get him to talk", such as sodium amytal, if he filed an insanity plea. The hope was that a 'narcoanalytic interview' could confirm whether or not he had been legally insane on 20 July, the date of the shootings. It is not known whether such an examination was carried out. William Shepherd, chair of the criminal justice section of the American Bar Association, stated, with respect to the Holmes case, that use of a "truth drug" as proposed, "to ascertain the veracity of a defendant's plea of insanity... would provoke intense legal argument relating to Holmes's right to remain silent under the fifth amendment of the US constitution." Discussing possible effectiveness of such an examination, psychiatrist August Piper stated that "amytal's inhibition-lowering effects in no way prompt the subject to offer up true statements or memories." Psychology Today Scott Linfield noted, as per Piper, that "there's good reason to believe that truth serums merely lower the threshold for reporting virtually all information, both true and false." See also Human experimentation Microexpression Narcotics Pharmacological torture Polygraph Project MKUltra Project Chatter Project Bluebird References External links Informal demonstration of thiopental (video), BBC, 4 October 2013. https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/docid-32136896.pdf Psychopharmacology Deception Drug culture Lie detection