Court Opinion

ID: 9836809
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-02 03:15:07.76939+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:45:18.947582
License: Public Domain

EVERETT, Senior Judge
(concurring in the result):
I concur in the result. If error occurred at trial — as Judge Effron concludes it did — clearly it could not have prejudiced appellant.
I have serious doubts, however, that error was committed. Admittedly, Mil.R.Evid. 707(a) imposes a broad prohibition on admission into evidence of polygraph results. This prohibition, which goes beyond the limitations on admissibility of such evidence in the federal district courts, presumably is based on a conclusion by the President that in this instance it is not “practicable” to “apply the principles of law and the rules of evidence generally recognized in the trial of criminal cases in the United States district courts.” Art. 36(a), UCMJ, 10 USC § 836(a). How the President and his advisers reached that conclusion is unclear to me; and after reading the various opinions in United States v. Scheffer, 523 U.S. 303, 118 S.Ct. 1261, 140 L.Ed.2d 413 (1998), I infer that for five of the nine Justices, the basis for that conclusion also is unclear. Nevertheless, by an 8-to-1 vote, the Supreme Court upheld Rule 707’s bar to admission in evidence of the results of a polygraph test; and so we are bound by the Rule.
Some care is required, however, in the interpretation and application of Mil.R.Evid. 707(a). For example, the Analysis of the Rule — which Judge Effron quotes — states that “polygraph evidence is not admissible by any party to a court-martial even if stipulated to by the parties.” 53 MJ at 282. This conclusion as to the lack of effect of a stipulation by the parties does not seem to rest on the language of Mil.R.Evid. 707, which makes no explicit reference to stipulations. Furthermore, to interpret Mil.R.Evid. 707 in this manner conflicts with the principle implicit in Article 36(a) that, so far as “practicable,” evidence admissible in criminal trials in federal district courts shall also be admissible in trials by courts-martial. Therefore, it is significant that the Supreme Court recently held that a defendant may validly waive the express provision in Fed.R.Crim.P. 11(e)(6) prohibiting use against a defendant in any criminal or civil proceeding of statements made by him in discussing a potential pretrial agreement. United States v. Mezzanatto, 513 U.S. 196, 115 S.Ct. 797, 130 L.Ed.2d 697 (1995). Similarly, in United States v. Piccinonna, 885 F.2d 1529, 1536 (1989), the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit sitting en banc concluded that polygraph testimony would be admissible when the “parties stipulate in advance as to the circumstances of the test and as to the scope of its admissibility.”1 In light of these precedents this Court should not accept the sweeping interpretation of Mil.R.Evid. 707 which Judge Effron seems to adopt.
Finally, it deserves note that to apply Mil. R.Evid. 707(a) with complete literalism would yield some unanticipated results. For example, the accused in Cooke v. Orser, 12 MJ 335 (CMA 1982), received the benefit of a bargain he made with Air Force representatives whereunder he would not be prosecuted if information he provided was confirmed by polygraph tests; but under the language of Mil.R.Evid. 707 — if interpreted literally — a court-martial would not have been able to consider evidence that an agreement had been made for Lieutenant Cooke to take a polygraph test and for the parties to be bound by the results thereof.
In view of the extensive use of polygraph tests in connection with interrogations, other situations can readily be imagined in which taking a polygraph test and discussing the results with a suspect may be logically quite relevant in determining whether the suspect’s subsequent statement to investigators was voluntary. I doubt that the President intended to exclude all reference to polygraph testing under these circumstances. Likewise, I question whether Mil.R.Evid. 707 was intended to apply in sentencing and to *285preclude the prosecution from showing on cross-examination or by rebuttal evidence that an accused who sought a lenient sentence because he had “repented” and had voluntarily confessed, made a truthful statement only after a polygraph test indicated deception on his part.2
In short, by finding that an error was committed at trial in this case, the Court may be setting the scene for unintended and undesirable consequences in future cases.

. Moreover, the majority (8-4) was willing to allow polygraph evidence under some circumstances even without a stipulation.

. This hypothetical bears some resemblance to the case at bar.