Court Opinion

ID: 9588080
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:29:46.465468+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:21:19.920915
License: Public Domain

Deen, Presiding Judge,
concurring specially.
"... [T]he lie detector’s reliability and technique have not yet gained scientific acceptance as an accurate means of detecting deception. . .” Salisbury v. State, 221 Ga. 718, 719 (146 SE2d 776). In accord, "... [M]any 'facts’ and comments . . . that are passed on to laymen fall into the category of science fiction or myth. . .” Harold G. Coffin, Ph. D. Invertebrate Zoology, University of Southern California, Liberty, Vol. 70, Number 5, September-October, 1975, pages 11-16, discussing the *17impossibility of the staggering complexity of a living cell resulting from primordial chance.
Stack v. State, 234 Ga. 19, 25 (214 SE2d 514), is not a holding that the " 'polygraph is a poisonous tree whose every fruit is forbidden’,” but specifically in cases where there is an elevation and imputation of veracity, as in Stack and the case sub judice, is the evidence inadmissible. Herlong v. State, 236 Ga. 326, 328 (223 SE2d 672), a 4-3 decision, where veracity was involved, nevertheless created an exception as explaining the conduct of officers obtaining an arrest warrant, not present in the case sub judice. I concur with Justice Hill’s dissent therein: "A recurring criticism by the public, lawyers and judges is that the law is too complicated. . . We had simplicity before, complexity now.”
Porter v. State, 237 Ga. 580, 582 (229 SE2d 384), is similar to Stack, as well as the case under consideration, and is inapposite to the exception contained in Herlong and would require a reversal, except for the fact that the trial judge’s offer to instruct the jury to disregard the reference to polygraph was specifically not accepted, and thus waived. In Porter this instruction was accepted and given, eliminating the controlling rule in Stack wherein a reversal was required in cases similar therein. Edwards v. State, 235 Ga. 603, 604 (221 SE2d 28) and Hill v. State, 237 Ga. 523, 525 (228 SE2d 898), refer to charges agreed to by counsel, not evidence admitted as to polygraph not otherwise agreed to, except by waiver of instruction to disregard.
Thus not only was counsel’s imperative primordial alarum timely and meritorious under the uncontradicted legal and scientific presumption of cause and effect but was likewise a syndrome contagious under the time honored absolute and rule of stare decisis requiring the reversal under Stack, supra, except for the voluntary subsequent agreement not to receive the instructions to disregard offered by the court, as was actually given in Porter.