Charles O’Callaghan, a polygraph examiner and Nebraska State Patrol investigator, has been named as a defendant in a lawsuit filed in the United States District Court for the District of Nebraska by Matthew Livers, from whom investigators coerced a false confession after an allegedly failed polygraph examination conducted by O’Callaghan, who is also a member of the Nebraska Association of Polygraph Examiners.

John Ferak of the Omaha World-Herald reports about Livers’ lawsuit in an article titled, “Man Exonerated in Cass County Killings Files Suit.” Excerpt:

A former Nebraska man filed suit Tuesday against Cass County and investigators after he spent more than seven months in jail before being exonerated in the April 2006 slayings of his uncle and aunt in their Murdock farmhouse.Two Chicago lawyers, Steven Drizin and Locke Bowman, filed the civil lawsuit on behalf of Matthew Livers in U.S. District Court in Omaha. The suit seeks unspecified monetary damages and asks for a federal jury trial. Shortly after Wayne and Sharmon Stock were found slain in the upstairs bedroom of their rural Cass County home, Livers and his cousin Nick Sampson were arrested. In 11 hours of questioning by the detectives, Livers denied more than 100 times that he had any involvement in the deaths. Finally, he confessed to the killings and offered that Sampson was with him. Later, the murder cases against both men collapsed when DNA and physical evidence excluded the cousins and instead linked the deaths to Greg Fester and Jessica Reid, a teenage couple who had been on the run from Wisconsin. Even after the Wisconsin teenagers were charged, Cass County officials continued to hold Livers and Sampson. For several more months, investigators tried to build a case that Livers and Sampson had enlisted the Wisconsin couple to carry out the killings. Cass County Attorney Nathan Cox eventually dropped all charges against Sampson and Livers. Fester and Reid both entered guilty pleas and received life sentences last March. After that sentencing hearing, Cox said overwhelming evidence indicated that the slayings occurred during a random, multistate crime spree by Fester and Reid. Cox also said that no credible evidence linked the Wisconsin killers to the Nebraska cousins.

The 25-page statement of complaint may be downloaded as a 76-kb PDF file here. Regarding the polygraph examination conducted by O’Callaghan and the post-test interrogation that followed the complaint states:

d. After more than five hours of interrogation, the defendants subjected Plaintiff to a polygraph examination. The defendants did not administer the polygraph in order to ascertain the truthfulness of Plaintiff’s denials of involvement, but rather as a further means to frighten and intimidate Plaintiff and to overbear his will. The defendants falsely informed Plaintiff that the polygraph was “foolproof” and that the results of the polygraph were definitive and could not be disputed. Thereafter, the defendants falsely informed Plaintiff that he had conclusively failed the polygraph examination and that he must therefore be guilty of the Stock murders. During the criminal proceedings against Plaintiff, the defendants never provided Plaintiff or his counsel with a clean, complete copy of the polygraph charts and defendant O’Callaghan’s report does not explain how those charts were read. On information and belief, the polygraph charts do not support any inference that Plaintiff was deceptive in denying participation in the Stock murders. e. Following the polygraph examination, the defendants became highly aggressive and accusatory in their interrogation of Plaintiff. The defendants repeatedly and hostilely cut off Plaintiff’s attempts to maintain his denials of involvement in the murders, telling him, for example, “That is just another line of shit.” The defendants employed this tactic deliberately in order to convince Plaintiff that resistance was futile and that he had no choice but to confess to the crime. f. The defendants falsely informed Plaintiff that there was physical evidence that connected him to the murders. g. The defendants repeatedly threatened Plaintiff that he would receive the death penalty if he did not confess to the Stock murders. For example, defendant Schenck threatened Plaintiff that Schenck was “going to do my level best to hang your ass from the highest tree. You are done. I will go after the death penalty. I’ll push and I’ll push and I’ll push and I will do everything I have to, to make sure you go down hard for this.” Plaintiff was told, “Your ass is on the line,” and “You are on the line, you are in the frying pan right now.” h. The defendants promised Plaintiff leniency if he confessed, telling him, “You cannot hide from this, okay? Right now we are waiting on, listen to me and listen well. This is the chance for you to save yourself. This is potentially a death sentence. No lie, okay? If you are involved in this then you can save yourself now.” Based on the defendants’ statements, Plaintiff actually came to believe that, because he had confessed, he would be permitted to go home.

The Livers case is yet another in a series of cases nationwide where innocent suspects have failed the polygraph and subsequently been coerced by investigators into providing a false confession. Other documented examples include Byron Halsey, Jeffrey Deskovic, Abdallah Higazy, and Kevin Fox.