When I was a cop, we had a case where a high school girl reported that this man in an expensive sports car had propositioned her as she was walking home from school. She got the license number off the car, and said she could identify the man. Two of our officers went to the man's home, and asked him if he would voluntarily come into the police station for a conversation about the issue, and would he be willing to stand in a lineup. He refused to go, so they went back to the station and got a bench warrant to arrest him and bring him in.
They went to his home when the warrant came in and standing inside his foyer told him they were arresting him for a crime against a minor. He was cuffed, and taken to the station. In the station, he asked for an attorney, and got one. Since it was a Friday, he was bailed out by the attorney and went home for the weekend.
His wife, being quite religious, was appalled by what happened, and suggested he should go stay in a hotel somewhere until he proved it was all over, because she'd "lost trust in him around the children." He left, and during the following week, his wife had a restraining order placed on him keep him away, because she expected the worse.
They built a good case around him and the girl said she saw him often, and he had tried this before. He was guilty, no doubt about it.
I was asked to do some follow-up investigating prior to the court date, to insure the officers handling the case had covered all the bases. In the process, I made it a point to watch this girl walking home from school every day, just like the day she filed the complaint. I also noted the time of day.
One thing that stood out to me was that the girl never seemed to walk home alone. She had two particular friends that walked with her, and her home was the first of the three, so they were with her all the way to her front walk. The second thing I noticed was that the intersection where this allegedly happened was very busy at that particular time of day because people leaving an office building nearby traveled through that intersection leaving work every day. He happened to be one of the high managers in that office building.
Then I took a female reserve officer with me, on a Saturday, and interviewed the two girls who walked with the victim from school every day. I found out that she had not walked alone through that intersection for at least a full semester, without one of them being with her. At first, they had thought there might have been a day or two, but when we tracked back the days they didn't walk with her, there were no days she was alone.
Then I got deeper into the situation, and asked them questions about what she liked, and didn't like. Come to find out she talked - often - about finding a man who had a fancy sports car, and lots of money, to buy her things. A "sugar daddy" type. Then they told me how she fantasized about things, and that particular sports car had been part of some of her wild fantasies. In fact, some of the fantasies were so bold that I had to leave the room while these girls told them to the female cop, with the girls' mothers present. I got the transcripts.
The next step was to look into the girl herself. They had lived in the area for two years. I found out where they'd lived before, and found out she had accused a teacher of touching her inappropriately. The teacher was fired, and her family moved from the area because they didn't want her going through the stigma of what happened.
Then there was another incident as well, before that, but swept under the rug, and hidden.
When asked about all of it, just before trial, she admitted she "might be fantasizing."
Charges were dropped.
The story didn't end there. The wife had already sued for divorce, he was fired from his job, and had nothing left.
Two weeks after the charges were dropped, he took his own life.
Simply put, make damned certain you're right when you bring charges, and anything that can help you get a better degree of accuracy in making that decision should be used. Even if there is a margin of error for a lie detector test, it's not nearly as bad as human error simply from oversight.
Just my opinion, based on my own experience.
and was willing at the time she could sober up and said that because she was