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Death of the Lie-Detector — Hegge & Confusione convinces the New Jersey Supreme Court to overturn 37-year old precedent permitting polygraph evidence at trial
Hegge & Confusione has persuaded the New Jersey Supreme Court to overturn 37 years of caselaw apparently permitting lie-detector evidence at trial whenever the parties stipulate to its admission.
In State v. A.O., the Court noted that polygraph results had not been proven reliable in the nearly 40 years since the Court addressed their admissibility in its 1972 decision in State v. McDavitt. Though the 1972 decision had approved the admission of the evidence in that case based on the parties' stipulation, the presumptive rule continued to bar polygraph evidence as not scientifically reliable. And, as Hegge & Confusione had argued, the 1972 decision had created only a "very narrow" exception to the presumptive inadmissibility of the evidence — an exception that did not extend to the very different circumstances leading to the polygraph evidence obtained in A.O. Relying on its supervisory authority to ensure the reliability of the criminal justice system in the State, the Supreme Court held that admitting the polygraph evidence against A.O. had caused an unfair trial in his case. Polygraph evidence obtained from a defendant without benefit of counsel is not admissible under any circumstances, and the use of polygraph evidence of any sort in future New Jersey trials is barred until the party seeking admission demonstrates that the evidence is scientifically reliable enough to go before the jury.
Click the links below to see how Hegge & Confusione's Brief led to this significant Supreme Court ruling.
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