We all know polygraphs are unrelaible, which is why they are inadmissable. If you’re cold blooded enough to murder someone, you probably don’t have the same reaction to lying as regular people. But given that, are there any notable examples where someone has passed a ploygraph, yet found later to have definitely done the deed?
http://dir.salon.com/story/health/feature/2000/03/02/polygraph/index.html?pn=3
http://www.cvsa1.com/Polygraph_Failures_Continue_To_Mount.doc (Word document) (collecting examples of polygraph failures) This is from the website of a company that sells voice stress analysis equipment, so consider the bias.
http://truth.boisestate.edu/polygraph/HONTS03.HTML (polygraph expert testifies about a case where he passed a person who later confessed to the crime)
Here is another example (http://starbulletin.com/2006/01/10/news/story02.html). This might not meet your requirements. He denies his guilt, and the evidence was on the weak side. The Hawaii Supreme Court affirmed his conviction though. It’s going to be tough to find cases where guilt is indisputable.
Gary Leon Ridgway, the Green River killer , passed a polygraph test. He was indisputably guilty, and confessed to 48 murders. Since a lot of the time a passed polygraph results in the end of the investigation into a particular suspect, it’s hard to tell how many guilty people have been cleared.
OJs lawyer said he would have passed a poly. His claim was that sometimes when a truly horrible crime is committed the perp can close it off from his mind. He then believes he is innocent. Which is what OJ was found to be.
Here’s what spy and convicted traitor Aldrich Ames (who reportedly beat several polygraph examinations) has to say on the subject.
Mildly interesting, if you can get past the idea of a sleazeball responsible for numerous deaths of agents maundering on about the wickedness of the State.
I’m not sure about how to post a link (not been here long) but the Robin Hood hills killings have some interesting polygraph results.
I have just watched the paradise lost, and paradise lost revelations films. Americans will be familiar with case. Three pre-pubescant boys brutally murdered. The crimes have gone to trial and three teens were convicted, one of whom has learning difficulties. The evidence was shoddy at best and seemed to be based on the fact they wore black and listened to Metalica.
The makers of the film interviewed the step father of the most brutaly murdered boy and found many problems with his story, he took a polygrah test regarding the case, which he passed.
Not OP but still woth a look with regard to polygraph tests
It wasn’t criminal, but someone I know once boasted that he’d passed a polygraph test while lying.
To hijack my own OP, the WM3 case does, unfortunately, show why maybe trials by juries of regular folk, especially in the deep South (!) maybe aren’t such a good thing. Nothing linking them to the deceased AT ALL, just a probably coerced confession from a borderline retarded kid, the testimony of two small girls that they heard one of the dudes say he did it, but oh yeah, they were into DEVIL MUSIC and wore BLACK!! They must be guilty. Then the documentary shows that the wackjob step father of one is more than likely the guilty party. Oh yeah, and the hysterical “expert Satanic testimony” of some fame hungry loser with an internet degree in Satanry from Southeastwestnorth College of the Blessed Holy Divinity in Conway, Arkansas. Truly not the best day in the history of the South when this verdict came down.
Hold on there — O.J. Simpson’s lawyer said his client committed a truly horrible crime?
You did a much better review of the case than my own, I am new to the situation. Having watched the film and done some (poor) research on the WM3 case it defies belief how it could have happened and I feel so sorry for the three ‘Devil Worshipping f*****S’ it seems plain who commited the crimes. A sad day for the western world not just the South.
I was ready to say something, but knew someone else would. Shit, if his lawyer said he did it and all this time I thought he didn’t, I need to rethink my views. Perhaps his lawyer was a racist like everyone else who thinks he was guilty.
HIJACK over.