The Youngstown Vindicator reports that the fate of Darryl Adams, a youth pastor accused of raping a minor, won’t be determined by the outcome of a polygraph “test,” after all:
Lie detector is out; jury trial is in for rape suspect
Wednesday, July 4, 2007The Youngstown man failed to take the polygraph test and will face trial Dec. 3.
YOUNGSTOWN — The man once willing to let a lie detector test decide his fate in a rape case is proceeding to trial.
Darryl Adams, 44, of Glenwood Avenue, was in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court on Tuesday with his lawyer, Dennis DiMartino, for a pretrial. Natasha Frenchko, an assistant prosecutor, represented the state.
Judge James C. Evans noted in a judgment entry that Adams failed to take the polygraph test as had been arranged. The judge said the case will now be set for a jury trial. Court records show the trial was scheduled for Dec. 3.
Adams had been scheduled to take a polygraph test June 23 at the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation in Richfield but left home in a rush and forgot to take his antidepressant medication, DiMartino said last month. The test did not go forward due to Adams’ anxiety.
Dawn Krueger, the assistant prosecutor who agreed in May that if Adams passed the test he would go free, said after the panic attack she doubted he would schedule another test.
Had Adams taken the test and failed, he had agreed to plead guilty to a single count of rape.
Adams is charged with three counts of rape. He is accused of raping a teen boy in his home between 2002 and 2004.
It is to be hoped that Ohio prosecutors will never again consent to having a pseudoscientific polygraphic trial-by-ordeal be substituted for the common law trial by a jury of one’s peers. For further reading on the harebrained scheme, see Result of Ohio Rape Case to Be Decided by Polygraph, More on Upcoming Trial-by-Polygraph in Ohio, and Polygraph in Ohio Rape Case Delayed.