James Alphonzo Frye was administered a deception test by Dr. William M. Marston in 1923 using Marston’s discontinuous blood pressure method. Marston’s opinion was that Frye was truthful in his recanting of a murder confession for the killing of a prominent Washington, DC, doctor. At Frye’s trial his defense attorneys attempted to have the results entered into evidence but were unsuccessful (United States v Frye 54 App D.C.46, 293 F 1013). The Frye Rule, as it came to be known, stated that “expert testimony based on a scientific technique is inadmissible unless the technique is generally accepted as reliable in the relevant scientific community.” The Frye Rule was invoked thereafter in many jurisdictions to bar PDD evidence from admissibility. The Frye Rule has been superseded by Federal Rule 702, cited in Daubert v Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc (1993), except in those states that do not follow the Federal Rules of Evidence. See: Daubert v Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc (1993): Stern & Krapohl (2003).
