New Jersey Supreme Court upholds polygraph exams for sex offenders under supervision

The New Jersey Supreme Court today issued a notable opinion rejecting challenges to the use of lie detector tests for sex offenders subject to parole or other community supervision. The opinion in J.B. v. New Jersey State Parole Board, No. 077235 (NJ May 8, 20107) (available here) gets started this way:

Petitioners L.A., R.L., and W.M. (parolees) challenge the constitutionality of the practices of the New Jersey State Parole Board (Parole Board) in administering polygraph examinations to sex offenders serving either parole supervision for life (PSL) or community supervision for life (CSL) sentences pursuant to N.J.S.A. 2C:43-6.4.

The parolees are all convicted sex offenders who have been released into the community subject to monitoring by the Parole Board.  For substantially similar reasons, they object to the administration of periodic polygraph examinations, which are required under the terms of their parole.  The parolees raise constitutional claims based on the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, the Sixth Amendment right to counsel, and constitutional privacy interests.  They also contend that the Parole Board’s regulations are arbitrary and capricious.

The Appellate Division upheld the Parole Board’s use of polygraph examinations but directed the Parole Board to adopt revised regulations to explain more clearly that the machine-generated test results cannot be used as evidence to support independent criminal charges or to impose additional sanctions.

For the reasons set forth in this opinion, we affirm but modify the Appellate Division’s opinion.  We uphold the Parole Board’s use of polygraph testing with the same limitations as the Appellate Division, but add that the Parole Board’s regulations must be further supplemented to buttress the parolees’ Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.