George,

This is a very interesting article.   Interesting enough that I wanted to respond, which I rarely do.  This is what interested me most about the article:

"Police soon focused their attention on Deskovic, then 16, and concluded that he was obsessed with the dead girl and may have been her killer. They claimed he constantly went to them, offering information, and knew some key details that had not been disclosed."

"Two months later, he agreed to take a polygraph test. After several hours, when he was convinced he had done poorly, he broke down, telling Detective Thomas McIntyre that he had hit Correa over the head with a Gatorade bottle and smothered her."

The detectives claimed that Deskovic "knew some key details that had not been disclosed." Later, he was "convinced he had done poorly" on the polygraph test, so he "broke down" and confessed.

I would sure like to know the actual results of that polygraph test.  If he passed it, then the detectives must have been so convinced of their case against him, due to his knowledge of details that only the killer would know, that they ignored the polygraph results and pursued the interrogation, using the polygraph as a prop in spite of the actual results.  Then again, if he actually failed the polygraph, then it makes me wonder whether he had guilty knowledge of undisclosed details of the crime, as claimed by the detectives.  Perhaps he wasn't the actual rapist/murderer, but perhaps he was an accomplice or witness.

Remember, the jury had to be quite sure, based on the facts of the case, not just an allegedly forced confession from a teenager, to ultimately convict him.  Also remember that the appellate judges agreed with the jury.

I know this is an ANTI-polygraph website, but perhaps we don't know enough about this case to assume that the polygraph failed, or that this "victim" was completely innocent in this crime despite the lack of his own DNA evidence.

Sure, I'm viewing this case through the eyes of the PRO-polygraph side, but it ought to make even some of the ANTI- folks wonder a little bit, don't you think?