New Jersey Murder Conviction Overturned Due to Polygraph Evidence Ruling

September 30, 2010 (Press-News.org) A New Jersey man recently obtained a reversal of his conviction for a 2002 homicide after he successfully petitioned for post-conviction relief. Aswad Charles, who was serving forty five (45) years to life in jail, will remain in prison pending the state's appeal of the Superior Court judge's decision.

At issue is the prosecution's reference to the results of a so-called "lie detector" test when Charles was tried for murder in Union County in 2004. Prosecutors claimed that Charles fired a single shot from a vehicle occupied by three men, killing an intended victim who was walking along an Elizabeth street.

The case against Charles included testimony from a jailhouse informant, who claimed that Charles had admitted pulling the trigger, as well as Charles's signed confession that he knew about the plan to ambush the victim, which he later disavowed. A prosecution witness testified that Charles had signed the statement after failing a polygraph test concerning his whereabouts at the time of the murder.

Charles exhausted his appeals through the New Jersey court system, but based his habeas corpus petition -- a separate legal proceeding that takes into account new law, among other things -- on a subsequent development in state law. In 2009, the New Jersey Supreme Court held in State v. A.O. that a criminal suspect must be represented by an attorney when agreeing to submit to a polygraph test or allowing such evidence to be used in court. Polygraph evidence is generally not allowable as evidence in New Jersey criminal cases except in the rare case that a defendant stipulates to its introduction.

Judge Scott J. Moynihan agreed with the petitioner's position that State v. A.O. should be retroactively applied to his case, but stayed his order pending appeal. "I think it's fair to say that a post-conviction remedy that releases a murderer -- someone convicted of murder -- is pretty rare," Professor George Thomas III of Rutgers School of Law told The Star-Ledger.

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