Regarding the use of polygraphs in the Nona Dirksmeyer murder investigation, it seems that:
1) There has been no allegation that the polygraph examiner who polygraphed Kevin Jones "wasn't a real polygrapher." The allegation by Jones' lawyer, Michael Robbins, is simply that he "He wasn't a certified polygraph examiner." He may have been a recent polygraph school graduate.
2) It seems that the Russellville Police Department did rely on polygraph results to "conclusively eliminate" suspects. A Russellville
Courier News report
posted to the CrimeLibrary.com message board states:
Quote:For the past month, Russellville police investigators have continued to pursue any and all leads provided to them by various sources in the apparent homicide of Arkansas Tech University sophomore Nona Dirksmeyer.
On Tuesday, all the work and effort put into the investigation was handed over to the 5th Judicial District Prosecuting Attorney’s Office for review.
Russellville Police Chief James Bacon released a statement Tuesday regarding the reports.
“At the request of the prosecuting attorney, to further support our initial statement of suspects being conclusively eliminated, we have re-evaluated each person of interest,” Bacon said in the released statement. “Subsequently, we requested the Arkansas State Police to administer additional polygraph examinations, and yet again we can say that all but one suspect has been conclusively eliminated.”
3) CBS
48 Hours also covered the Dirksmeyer murder story, and has made about five minutes of video from Kevin Jones' post-polygraph interrogation available with its story:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/02/07/48hours/main3802230.shtml The first sequence of the video shows investigators asking Jones whether he would be willing to take a polygraph test. The time stamp on the video shows 17:17 hours on 21 December 2005. In the next sequence, the post-test interrogation has already begun, and the time is 18:26 hours. So the pre-test and in-test phases of Jones' polygraph examination took
at most 69 minutes. By way of comparison, the
video of Louis Rovner's polygraph examination of Sahil Sharma, which includes only pre-test and in-test phases, is
more than twice as long, running a total of 157 minutes.