Bronx Justice. Joseph Teller

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СКАЧАТЬ the building’s center courtyard. He wondered if he was about to hear that Darren had once again been spotted by one of the victims.

      “I spoke to my boss,” Pope said. “We’re willing to give your man a polygraph.”

      “Wonderful!” said Jaywalker, making no attempt to hide either his surprise or his pleasure.

      “It’ll be with the usual stipulation,” Pope continued. “I don’t know if you’re familiar with that or not.”

      “Vaguely,” Jaywalker lied. Stipulation?

      “If he passes, we D.O.R. the case. If he flunks, the jury gets to hear that he did. I’ll go ahead and set up a date with Detective Paulson, who’ll administer the test. I suggest you call him in a day or two and get the date. I know he’s pretty backed up right now, so it’s likely to be a month, at the least.”

      “Good enough. And I appreciate this,” Jaywalker felt compelled to add. Because he really did.

      “Let me put it this way,” said Pope, all business all the time. “I’ve got four girls who say they’re sure of their identifications. I believe them. But who knows? I could be wrong.” And with that, he shrugged, turned and walked away.

      Jaywalker lost no time in sharing the news with the Kingstons, who seemed every bit as elated as he was. And if Darren was secretly apprehensive about the sudden reality of undergoing a lie detector test, he never once showed it.

      Jaywalker went over the ground rules, explained that a “D.O.R.” meant a discharge on one’s own recognizance, the functional equivalent of a dismissal of all charges. He added that the flip side, the defense’s agreement to let the jury know if Darren flunked the test, was unenforceable. Pope no doubt knew that, and had to assume that Jaywalker did, too. But as a practical matter, the bargain generally served its purpose. Defendants who flunked polygraph exams tended to fold their cards soon afterward and plead guilty.

      “Next,” said Jaywalker, “we’ve got to decide whether we want to go into the test cold, or schedule our own private one beforehand.”

      Marlin was the first to speak. “We leave it up to you, Jay,” he said.

      “You can’t leave it up to me. It’s not my money. And it could cost anywhere from three hundred to five hundred dollars.”

      Marlin took a moment to ponder that. In addition to the strain of having posted Darren’s bail, he had Jaywalker’s fee to contend with and was also responsible for paying John McCarthy, the investigator. The burden had to be enormous for him.

      None of the other family members spoke. Inez may have been the ranking expert on child rearing, and Jaywalker had the sense that she ran a pretty tight ship at home, but on matters of money, they all deferred to Marlin.

      “Let’s take the private test first,” he said finally.

      Jaywalker caught himself wondering if that amounted to a hedge of sorts. Did Marlin, too, harbor second thoughts about his son’s innocence? But it was a question that went unasked and, therefore, unanswered.

      “Fine,” said Jaywalker. “I’ll set it up as soon as I can. Okay with you, Darren?”

      “Okay with me, Jay.” His broad smile completely trumped his father’s hesitancy, and with it, Jaywalker’s own doubts. Once again, it was as though the case was shadowed by a giant overhead pendulum, which would swing one moment in the direction of guilt and the next moment back to innocence.

      

      In a year and half of private practice, and in two before that with Legal Aid, Jaywalker had never had a client take a polygraph examination. There was a reason for that. Polygraph results—unlike fingerprint evidence, blood typing (and now DNA tests), ballistics comparisons, hair and fiber analyses, and even handwriting and voice comparisons—were then, and continue to be, inadmissible at trial. The rule that excludes them is a sound one. Controlled studies have demonstrated their accuracy rate to be anywhere from fifty to ninety percent. Even a ninety-percent certainty leaves much to be desired in a system that prides itself on requiring proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt before there can be a conviction. As for a fifty-percent accuracy rate, that’s the equivalent of a coin toss.

      That said, polygraphs can still be useful tools. For one thing, it’s always interesting, and occasionally quite revealing, to watch a suspect’s reaction to the suggestion that he submit to a test, particularly when he’s been told that the test is guaranteed to reveal deception. Some suspects will hem and haw, make up excuses, or even admit their guilt at that point. Jaywalker had tried the tactic several times already with Darren, warning him that failure would bring disaster. Each time, Darren had, without flinching, reaffirmed his eagerness to take the test.

      Secondly, the exam by its nature includes an in-depth interview of the subject, something that law enforcement personnel are always eager to conduct. Many a suspect has been coaxed or tricked into a revealing admission during the interview, occasionally even into an outright confession.

      Finally, whatever its intrinsic worth or evidentiary value, a favorable polygraph result becomes something to hang one’s hat on. A defense lawyer will leak it to a newspaper reporter; a prosecutor will cite it as a reason to recommend dismissal of a case; and a judge will refer to it in granting that dismissal.

      Hypocrisy? Junk science elevated to mainstream thinking? Perhaps. But Jaywalker wasn’t going to let such philosophical considerations deter him. Jacob Pope had offered them a way out, and they were going to do their best to take advantage of it.

      Over the next few days, Jaywalker asked around about polygraph operators and came up with a handful of names. The one he kept hearing was Dick Arledge, a man who taught and trained other examiners, and who’d refined the technology to the point of developing and designing his own machines. Jaywalker called his office, set up an appointment, and notified Darren of the date and time, and the fee he would have to bring. He also phoned the district attorney’s office and learned that they’d scheduled their exam for early December. That was good; it gave the defense ample time to get their own test done and evaluate the results.

      Jaywalker didn’t bother telling either Pope or Detective Paulson, the polygraphist he’d chosen, that he was having Darren examined on his own. Just as Marlin had hedged his bet by opting for the private test, so was Jaywalker hedging by his silence. That way, if Darren were to pass, great; he would go into the D.A.’s test more confident than ever. And if he were to flunk, they could always pull out of the second one. “I’ve done a little checking,” he could always tell Pope. “I never knew how unreliable these things are. We’ll take our chances at trial.”

      

      Looking back later, Jaywalker would come to realize that the week waiting for that first exam was a strange time, an interlude during which he fantasized that his role in the case was drawing to an end. In spite of everything he knew about polygraphs and their shortcomings, he gradually put that knowledge aside. Instead, he began to engage in a bit of magical thinking. He became convinced that the test would solve everything. After all, this wasn’t a case involving nuances. There was no claim of self-defense, for example, or of an innocent mistake; there were no state-of-mind issues to be debated. No, Darren was either completely innocent or he was just as completely guilty. Now a little black box with a bunch of wires attached to it was going to tell them, for once and for all.

      Which made it only natural to wonder just which answer the box was going to spit out.

      Jaywalker СКАЧАТЬ