Brockton, Massachusetts Enterprise staff writer Maureen Boyle reports. Excerpt:
For two hours, Barbara Ataman sat in her lawyer’s office last month and underwent a polygraph examination.
“Did you steal money from the Southeastern Regional School District?” the former transportation supervisor for the school district was asked. “Did you plan with anyone to steal money from the Southeastern Regional School District?”
“No,” Ataman answered to each question.
That test on July 25 marked the first round in Ataman’s attempt to fight charges that she and another former Southeastern Regional School District employee, Patricia Cheromcka, stole money from the school district and conspired with each other to steal cash.
“I wasn’t worried,” Ataman said. “Because I’m not guilty.”
Getting the polygraph test results admitted as evidence in the case, however, will be an uphill battle in the courts.
Her attorney, Kevin Reddington, is trying to convince Bristol County prosecutors to give Ataman another polygraph test, then either drop the charges or let the results in as evidence.
“She is innocent,” Reddington said. “They are going to have to fish or cut bait.”
Reddington said he will try to first convince prosecutors, then a judge, to accept the validity of the polygraph test given to Ataman in his bid to clear her of the larceny and conspiracy charges.
Citing U.S. Supreme Court and state court decisions on the admissibility of scientific evidence, Reddington said he will show that polygraph tests are scientifically reliable and should be entered as evidence in court.
It is an argument that has been used before with little success.
“There is still some debate on the reliability of the test,” said Paul J. Martinek, editor of Lawyers Weekly USA. “People are loathe to have a test that really tests our nervousness.”
The state Supreme Judicial Court as recently as 1999 left it up to judges to decide if the tests are reliable and if it meets the scientific reliability test set by the U.S. Supreme Court in dealing with scientific evidence.
The U.S. Supreme Court, in Daubert vs. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, a case involving whether the drug Bendectin caused birth defects, found that the theory and technique to be introduced as evidence has to be subjected to peer review and publication, there has to be a known or potential rate of error, there has to be standards controlling the technique and there must be a general acceptance of it in the general scientific community.
With lie detector tests, there isn’t enough acceptance in the scientific community to justify admission as evidence, said Dana Curhan, an appellate attorney.
He said the examinations may test someone’s reaction to a question but can’t tell if the person is telling the truth.
“They are junk science. They don’t work,” he said of the tests. “Nobody has been able to prove that they work. … There is really no clear scientific basis that they work.”