State v. Pierce: Refining the Standard for the Admission of Polygraph Evidence

Although the inadmissibility of polygraph evidence in the course of a criminal trial has been well-established law in Tennessee for almost fifty years, the quandary presented itself two years ago in State v. Pierce.\u27 This case forced the Tennessee Supreme Court to balance the need to protect state citizens against sexual predators with the wellestablished rules of evidence which hold that polygraph evidence is inherently unreliable, and therefore irrelevant and inadmissible. \u27 In Pierce, the issue before the court was whether polygraph test results, which were performed as part of a sex offender risk assessment and encouraged by leading psychosexual analysts and researchers, were admissible in the non-capital sentencing hearing of a convicted sex offender