Francine Bronson (not her real name), a nurse in Yakima, Washington, was charged by the new wife of her ex-husband of sexually abusing her own four-year-old son. Because there was no real evidence of abuse, the district attorney offered Nurse Bronson a deal...: "If you can pass a polygraph test, we'll forget this thing but you have to agree in advance that, should you fail the test, we can use that result in evidence against you." Frantic to be freed of this outrageous allegation, Nurse Bronson agreed--and failed the test. The polygraph examiner testified that he had graduated from a recognized polygraph school (not mentioning that the entire course of instruction lasted only eight weeks) and that he had given hundreds of tests in the course of his career. He said that his determinations had never been proven to be wrong. He explained that he had administered a state-of-the-art-control question polygraph test to the defendant and that, in his professional opinion, she was clearly deceptive in denying having sexually abused her child. Called to testify for the defense, I thumbtacked the defendant's polygraph chart to an easel in front of the jury box together with the numbered list of the questions she had been asked. I showed the jurors how the examiner marked the chart in pen where he had asked the numbered questions and that most of them were followed by changes in Nurse Bronson's blood pressure, in her breathing patterns, and in the sweating of her palms.

Here is where the examiner asked her "Have you ever committed an unusual sex act?" and you can see that there was some reaction to that question. But here, where he asked, "On the date of May 14, did you take Johnny's thingy in your mouth?" that was followed by a much larger reaction. As I explained earlier, you "fail" a polygraph test if you are more disturbed by the relevant question than you are by the control question. As you can see, Nurse Bronson was clearly more bothered by the accusation that she took her little boy's thingy in her mouth than she was by the question about "unusual sex acts." That is why--that is the only reason why--the examiner concluded she was lying about abusing little Johnny.

I was standing close enough to see the jurors' eyes widen with shocked understanding at this news. And I was not surprised to learn that it had taken them all of an hour and a half to bring in a verdict of not guilty. But not every defendant in Nurse Bronson's situation has an attorney dedicated enough to bring in a competent rebuttal witness. And the expense, not to mention the emotional cost, of this trial was assuredly money for which Yakima County (and Nurse Bronson) had better uses.