INDIAN ROCKS BEACH, Fla. _ On a June morning in 1985, a 30-year-old jail inmate named Jack Pearcy sat in an administrative room of the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office. He agreed to be hooked up to a machine designed to detect lies.
"Did you really see Jimmy Dailey stab Shelly Boggio?"
"Yes."
"Do you really believe Jimmy Dailey killed Shelly Boggio?"
"Yes."
Initial results suggested Pearcy was telling the truth. But there was more.
"Did you stab Shelly Boggio?"
"No."
"Did you hold her down so Jimmy Dailey could stab her?"
"No."
"Did you help Jimmy Dailey throw her into the water?"
"No."
Pearcy was told the test registered "significant emotional responses," an indication he could be lying. He admitted then that he hadn't been completely truthful.
He started to cry.
He spoke again about what had happened in the dark a month earlier on an early morning in May. Ever since, he said, he had nightmares. In them, he saw a man straddling a young girl. He saw the man plunging a knife into her body. He saw the man's face, his features distorted but recognizable.
The face was his own.
