Carroll County's newly elected state's attorney, Jerry F. Barnes, has the opportunity to change a number of long-standing policies of the prosecutor's office. Beginning the selective use of polygraph tests on rape victims, however, should not be among those changes.
Even if lie detector use is a "one-in-a-thousand kind of thing," as Mr. Barnes said, testing rape victims demeans them and sends the wrong message to the community.
We cannot fathom the motives of Mr. Barnes, who this fall unseated the county's prosecutor of 20 years, Thomas E. Hickman. Carroll County has not been besieged by women filing false rape charges.
There was a case two years ago of a Western Maryland College student who claimed she was raped and later confessed she had fabricated the story. It is understandable that state police investigators in the county's Child Abuse and Sexual Assault unit, who spent a great deal of time chasing this phantom rapist, would not want a repetition of that case. However, that isolated incident is not reason to overturn the office's standing policy -- and an eminently sensible one -- not to use polygraph tests on rape victims.
When investigators use lie detectors, they are tacitly telling victims they don't trust them. Given the unwillingness of many rape victims to file criminal complaints and endure detailed investigations into the very private aspects of their sex and love life, investigators should use investigative methods that encourage -- rather than discourage -- victims to come forward.
By using or threatening to use a lie detector, investigators will probably discourage cooperative witnesses. With the fear of false readings on a polygraph, victims may decide that being raped is violation enough and refuse to file charges. If rapists are not prosecuted, the community at large is jeopardized.
Mr. Barnes said a prosecutor's nightmare is to convict an innocent person. Indeed, but he also must be concerned about the woman who truly is a rape victim but fails a polygraph test. It has happened in Howard County, and we would not want to see a Carroll County woman victimized twice because of a faulty test.
Rather than focusing his investigative efforts on victims, Carroll County's incoming state's attorney would be better off establishing policies to improve the investigation and apprehension of rapists.