Ohio Judge Orders Victims in Sexual Assault Cases to Submit to Lie Detector Tests

Rachel Dissell of the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports that Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court Judge Alison Floyd has ordered the victims in four sexual assault cases to submit to polygraph “testing.” In addition, Floyd has ordered the perpetrators of the assaults, who have already been found guilty, to submit to polygraph tests for sentencing purposes. It would appear that Judge Floyd acted ultra vires in ordering the victims to submit to lie detector testing.

The Ohio legal system has a long and shameful history of relying on the pseudoscience of polygraphy, from the case of Floyd Fay, who in 1978 was wrongly convicted of murder based on polygraph “evidence,” to the more recent case of Sahil Sharma, where in 2007 Summit County Common Pleas Judge Judy Hunter was duped into admitting polygraph “evidence” over prosecutors’ objections.

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