Law Commons^™

Penile Polygraphy: The Admissibility Of Penile-Plethysmograph Results At Sentencing In Tennessee, Steven Poland

Vanderbilt Law Review

State judges in Tennessee currently consider the results of penile plethysmograph ("PPG") evaluations when sentencing convicted sex offenders. These highly intrusive physical tests purport to identify whether an offender's arousal is considered "deviant" by measuring the change in penis size after viewing various stimuli. Because the results are usually buried in psychosexual evaluations that are part of general presentence assessments of recidivism risk, PPG evaluations suffer from a lack of standardization and little attention under the rules of evidence. Interestingly, PPG testing is similar to polygraphy in a number of ways, although studies have shown that PPG results are more …