Court Opinion

ID: 9617794
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 05:01:13.316793+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:04:16.767382
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
The State, in a motion for rehearing, cites paragraph 6 of the agreement between it and the defendant as precluding examination of the polygraph examiner. We do not agree. Paragraph 6 of the agreement states: “Defendant and District Attorney hereby stipulate that results of said polygraph examination shall not be admissible as described above if said results are inconclusive and that sole responsibility for determining whether said polygraph examination results are conclusive or inconclusive shall be with the operator who administered the examination.”
This portion of the agreement goes only to admissibility in evidence of the test results. The opinion stated that the results would be inadmissible if “inconclusive.” Porterfield, supra. Because the only party who could determine whether the test results were inconclusive was the police operator, the opinion went to great lengths to show Dr. Peacock’s professional opinion was not that the police examiner’s test results were inconclusive, but that no polygraph can do anything but detect an emotional response, and no examiner can determine from the test results that the recorded emotional response was a showing of fear, disgust, hate, anger or deception.
We reaffirm our commitment, stated in the opinion, that justice is better served by an adversarial procedure wherein truth is ascertainable where experts of both sides have the opportunity of presenting their professional opinion on such a controversial issue.