Raymond Lewis Perry, the man accused of murdering an off-duty police officer, has declared he's not the killer.
The results of a lie-detector test made public this week show that's the truth. But a jury may never know that. State rules say flatly lie-detector results can't be used in court. Now Perry's lawyers are challenging the ban.
Police routinely use lie detectors to screen their own applicants and to catch criminals. But the results of those tests don't make it to Virginia courts.
Perry's defense lawyers say advancing polygraph technology is changing some attitudes, and some states have allowed lie-detector results in court, including New Mexico and Ohio. And they say it's unfair that the state's main witnesses are all, according to the filing, untruthful and self-serving criminals bargaining for shorter sentences.
“They are liars. They are not jailhouse snitches. Because if you snitch there is a possibility you are telling the truth. They are jailhouse liars,” said Perry.
Victor Decker, an off-duty Norfolk officer, was out with friends at an Oceana go-go bar three years ago. When the bar closed, he walked across the parking lot to his truck parked a hundred yards away. Police say he was shot once in the head. The case went unsolved for nearly two years before detectives charged federal inmate Raymond Perry with murder.
Here's the odd legal quirk this motion exposes: Prosecutors are allowed to use it on the testimony of criminals and liars. But court rules won't let Perry's lawyers use a lie detector to prove he's telling the truth.
Click here to read the court documents – Motion to Admit Polygraph Evidence (PDF)
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