This article considers polygraph use in criminal cases in light of New Jersey’s adoption of the Daubert test for scientific evidence admissibility. Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, 509 U.S. 579, 587 (1993). The New Jersey Supreme Court adopted the Daubert test in State v. Olenowski, 253 N.J. 133 (2023). Thirty years earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Daubert and replaced the more restrictive Frye test for admissibility.

Polygraph developments and New Jersey’s adoption of the less restrictive admissibility test call for reconsideration of polygraph reliability and admissibility. It was over a half century ago that the New Jersey Supreme Court held in McDavitt that polygraph evidence is not sufficiently reliable to be admissible without a stipulation at trial. State v. McDavitt, 62 N.J. 36, 43 (1972). Since McDavitt, polygraphs which have made “tremendous advancements in instrumentation and technique.” See J. McCall, “Misconceptions and Reevaluation—Polygraph Admissibility After ‘Rock’ and ‘Daubert,’” 1996 U. Ill. L. Rev. 363, n.25 (1996) (noting that in the years following Frye, while other scientific evidence developed and was deemed to have achieved the required reliability, advances in the polygraph were ignored by the courts.)