And hence the dilemma. I assume that the MOM trials are supposed to operate on the issues of fairness and just based on the evidence. Having a witness refuse to submit to a veritaserum test could create an impermissible inference that he is guilty no matter what he says. It’s one of the reasons why polygraph tests are frowned upon in Muggle courts.
Well, there are other reasons than guilt to avoid a polygraph - it’s not entirely reliable. The Veritaserum Seems to be - the author’s given us no indication it can fail.
Sorry to hijack, but no. No-Prizes were not awarded for merely pointing out mistakes or continuity errors. They were only given to those that pointed out something that could be seen as an error, with an explanation of how the item could actually be correct. Say they forgot to show Scott Summers wearing his ruby-quartz glasses. Someone who wrote in to say that he’d have blown the building to hell would be refused a No-Prize. A letter that postulated that the young mutant Leech, who suppresses other mutant’s powers, was standing just out of frame at that time would be eligible for the No-Prize. Stan the Man was very consistent on this point.
I can’t even count the number of Marvel Comics of the era that I have, and have read, and I don’t recall that aspect at all. I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m just saying I recall it differently. Perhaps I was reading different titles where things were done differently - Lee wasn’t a writer at the time on anything I was reading, that I recall.
Now I get a No-Prize.
He was unable to convincingly behave that way in the courtroom. They sent him to Azkaban even after his sob show.
You’re entitled to that opinion, but all legal systems I’m familiar with tend to favor regular sworn testimony over the closest equivelants we have to Veritaserum: Sodium Pentothal, hypnosis, and polygraph tests. There are many ethical reasons for this aside from the safety and reliability concerns. I don’t think we’ve seen enough of Veritaserum in the books to know whether it is all that much safer and reliable than its Muggle counterparts.
Dumbledore is able to get the information he needs from Crouch, Jr., but that doesn’t necessarily mean all such questionings are equally effective. He has to prompt Crouch, Jr. several times, so the questioner and questions themselves could make a difference (just as with hypnosis). On the safety end of things, at the end of the interrogation Crouch, Jr. stops talking and his head droops to the side. Does he lose consciousness again? If so, is it because of the Veritaserum or Dumbledore’s earlier Stun spell? We don’t get the chance to learn about any longer term effects, because Fudge’s Dementor bodyguard steps in and finishes things off.
Speaking of Fudge, I’m looking over the end of Goblet of Fire now and Fudge explicitly states that he doesn’t buy Crouch, Jr.'s story even if it was obtained under Veritaserum, since “he may have believed himself to be acting upon You-Know-Who’s orders - but to take the word of a lunatic like that, Dumbledore…” Even if it is perfectly safe and 100% effective, in many cases the testimony Veritaserum produces would be worthless. Fudge’s remarks indicate that the MoM believes this to be significant. If they have any interest in the truth and justice at all, they may also realize that judges and juries are more likely to believe that statements are literally true if they know the speaker can’t intentionally be lying. They may then overlook the possibility that the person is simply mistaken or truthfully reporting a red herring.
Nice catch on Fudge’s line, I hadn’t recalled that. It still seems like something Rowling should give us an explanation for - even a single line about the Ministry’s policy on Veritaserum…
In one of the earlier books–I can’t remember which–someone tells Harry that after Voldemort disappeared, a lot of the Death Eaters “seemed to come out of trances.” They may have been just pretending to come out of trances to save their backsides, or it is possible that Voldemort had them under the Imperious curse or something similar. It makes sense to me that if Voldemort was controlling the person, giving that person veritaserum wouldn’t be effective, because one would have to have given it to the controller–to Voldemort–to get the truth.
Huh?
The Imperious Curse doesn’t seem to affect memory, at all. Think of it this way. If Lucius Malfoy were force-fed some veritaserum, and they asked ‘Did you join Voldemort of your own free will?’, they’d get back a big yes. If they asked someone who’d been Imperioused, they’d get back a ‘No’.
Except that if you ask a question of someone Imperiused, you’re not actually talking to that person, you’re talking to the cursed individual (presumably, in this case, Voldemort). And Voldemort, unfortunately, has not been dosed with Veritaserum.
I hadn’t got that impression. If this is the case, it’d be next to impossible to Imperious more than one person at a time. Is there a part later in the book that indicates this?
I really don’t think that’s the way Imperius works. Say I decided to smack the Imperius down on CandidGamera. Then you give him some Veritaserum. You ask him “What’s your favorite color?” You’ll get his answer, not mine. I don’t know if you’d get the correct answer if you asked him “Are you under the influence of the Imperius Curse?” That might lead to some sort of paradox in his brain and he might swallow his tongue or something.
Not that I hope that happens, or anything. 
I don’t think there’s much of a mind-link there. Certainly not two-way communication. It’s possible, though, that someone is Imperioused, and instructed not to answer questions posed by Dumbledore. Then, later, Dumbledore doses them with Veritaserum - the two magics come into direct conflict. That would be an interesting situation.
However, that said - I imagine there are ways to break the Imperious curse on someone, and one could perform them before administering the serum.
Stp that now! You’re only making it worse.
I’ve always taken it for granted that Veritaserum is resistable, just like the other forms of mind control we’ve seen in the books (Imperius, Legilimency); Harry just hasn’t found out how to fight it yet. Perhaps an interogatee could beat it by concentrating on statements that are true but irrelevant (“There are seventeen Sickles in a Galleon, my sister is a clerk at the Happy Hippogriff Dead Rat Emporium, I know a great recipe for fried Murtlaps with sour cream…”) and mentally blocking out the questions they’re actually being asked. And as a few other posters have noted, people who are deluded presumably give answers they believe to be true, not ones that are objectively true … and most of the accused Death Eaters seem to have spent time in Azkaban before their trial, which means we can assume delusion is the rule rather than the exception.
I’m firmly of the opinion that the Ministry during the first war was basically a Death Eater factory – Crouch, Senior’s policies seem to have resulted in massive public resentment, a total lack of confidence in the legal process, and a large number of people who started out sane being turned into total nut jobs by the dementors. Fudge doesn’t seem to have learned anything from this.
Polygraphs are not admissible as evidence in court, at least not in the US. They detect stress, which is assumed to be indicative of lying. There are many things which can go wrong and produce a false positive, so as far as US courts are concerned, it’s junk science. Also, they say that pathological liars can fool polygraphs, because they don’t feel any guilt when they lie, and hence don’t stress out about false statements.
As for sodium pentothal, I remember Cecil wrote a column about it once, but I can’t find it in the archive. IIRC, it turns out that sodium pentothal is really just an intoxicant, and it’s no more effective than getting the person drunk.
If we assume that veritiserum is supposed to be a magical version of sodium pentothal, then perhaps it’s useful as a “quick and dirty” way to get someone to talk, but it’s not reliable enough to be used in court.
Don’t assume that just because Voldemort could detect a memory charm, that the Ministry can. Remember, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named-Because-We-Have-No-Balls is much more powerful than most other wizards. He’s on par with Dumbledore, after all. What’s more, he was capable of posessing other people’s bodies at that point, and he is capable of knowing immediately if someone is lying to him. Both of these last two points make it plausible that Voldy has special mind-reading skills.
I seem to remember once that Snape threatened to use Veritaserum on Harry, except he said he was holding back because “then we’ll have to listen to you spill your guts for several hours in class” or words to that effect. Harry imagined all the things he would have to reveal: how he was getting help in the Triwizard Cup, the time that Hermione had stolen from Snape’s office, any number of his own petty offenses, and so on. I’ll have to try to find that.
We’ve only seen Veritaserum used once, and that was under very controlled circumstances. Once they had got the truth from Barty Crouch at the end of the Triwizard Tournament, they put him to sleep (or something). My above paragraph suggests that it’s possible that under the effects of Veritaserum, poorly directed, the subject will begin to tell the truth about anything and everything that occurs to him, making it difficult to learn any particular truth unless you’re good at directing the subject’s answers that way.
I’ll have to find my copy of Goblet of Fire to find that passage again.