sackett wrote on Apr 30
th, 2008 at 11:00pm:
Nice try! It is exactly specualtion and rationalization on your part (without knowledge of all the case facts) to insist Donahue's passing a polygraph regarding the Girard case prevented his continuation as a suspect in the any other case. I am not sure I must have missed where Donohue took a polygraph in the Giambra case.
Jim, I have not claimed that Donohue's passed polygraph regarding the death of Crystallynn Girard "prevented his continuation as a suspect in any other case." Nor have I stated that Donohue was polygraphed in connection with the death of Joan Giambra.
What I'm suggesting is that had not investigators relied on Donohue's passed polygraph, and had they not wrongly excluded him as a suspect in the death of Crystallynn Girard, then Donohue might not have been at liberty to kill Joan Giambra some seven moths later.
Quote:Remember, polygraph is an investigative tool, NOT the end all to be all in investigations. Does what you suggest occur? Sure. But if the DA or police had anything (at the time) concerning either case, they certainly would have considered it and probably discounted the polygraph results. That happens all the time. The police had nothing, so to suggest the polygraph results in one case presented itself as a wall for further consideration of involvement in that or any other case is rediculous.
Investigators either believe the polygraph community's claims that their "test" has an accuracy rate in the 90% percentile or they don't. If do believe such claims (which are
unsupported by the scientific evidence), then investigatorial misdirection is inevitably going to result, as it appears to have in the Crystallynn Girard murder investigation.
Quote:At the time, there was no DNA. So let's look at it from that time frame. No evidence to suggest his involvement, no ability to pursue him.
Donohue had both motive and opportunity. And he had been questioned in connection with the 1975 strangulation of Carol Reed, who lived in the same building and with whom he had had a relationship.
Quote:OK george I get it. False negatives occur. If your purpose is to attack every infrequent case a polygraph is less than viable, then so be it. But to attack the overall utility and accuracy because of a few select cases out of hundreds of thousands is a weak strategy.
Polygraph errors are not so uncommon, and AntiPolygraph.org is not prepared to allow them to be swept under the rug or flushed down the memory hole. High-profile cases where killers passed the polygraph include the aforementioned case of Green River Killer
Leon Gary Ridgeway, "Angel of Death"
Charles Cullen, and "Woodchipper Killer"
Richard Crafts. And these fooled the lie detector at a time when information on polygraph countermeasures was not
readily available on-line.
Quote:Furthermore, there is no way to know if the victim Giambra would still be alive if the polygraph results pertaining to Girard were any different and to suggest so is disinformative and borderline insanity. What you're suggesting is that had the results in the Girard case been different, Donohue would definitely not have committed any further murders? You do not know that, neither does anyone else. But, I guess it serves your purpose to connect dots that don't exist..
It's true that we cannot
know that Joan Giambra would not have been killed had not Dennis Donohue (apparently erroneously) passed his polygraph regarding the death of Crystallynn Girard. But it's a distinct possibility.
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The Crystallynn Girard Murder Case: Yet Another Failure of the Polygraph (Read 43761 times)
