Advertisement

Dotson Balking at Submitting to Polygraph Test

Share
Associated Press

Gary Dotson, imprisoned for six years for a rape that his former accuser now says never occurred, is balking at taking a lie-detector test, his attorney said Sunday.

Dotson’s lawyer, Warren Lupel, said that he and his client, who is free on bond, had agreed earlier to the test after talking with an aide to Gov. James R. Thompson, who will consider Dotson’s bid for clemency during a meeting Thursday with the Illinois Prisoner Review Board.

“He (Dotson) agreed to take it, but he is concerned about it after talking to family members and some other lawyers,” Lupel said in a telephone interview.

Advertisement

Lupel said that an aide to the governor had asked that Dotson be tested by Robert Cummins, a polygraph technician who examined Cathleen Crowell Webb on April 13 and concluded that she had told the truth when she recanted her 1979 testimony that sent Dotson to prison.

Because of advice from his family and three other lawyers, Dotson has second thoughts also about an examination by a forensic psychiatrist to determine Dotson’s “capacity for rape,” Lupel said.

Advertisement