State v. Schimmel, 85 N.E.3d 774

Curtis Schimmel applied for a position with the Clark County Sheriff’s Office and, as part of the hiring process, signed a consent form agreeing to a pre-employment polygraph and interview and acknowledging that refusal or stopping the exam would forfeit further consideration for employment.
During the polygraph pre-test and examination, Schimmel made statements admitting viewing child pornography and maintaining archives of images; a subsequent search warrant recovered 28 images of nude minors from his devices.
Schimmel was indicted on three counts of illegal use of a minor in nudity-oriented material and moved to suppress his statements and the fruits of the search, arguing his Fifth Amendment privilege was violated because the polygraph/interview was compelled by the threat of losing potential government employment.
The trial court granted the suppression, relying on Turley (Lefkowitz v. Turley), treating loss of future government contracting/employment as a coercive penalty.
The State appealed; the appellate court reversed, holding Schimmel voluntarily participated in a routine pre-employment screening, he had no protected property interest in the job, and he was free to stop or withdraw without being compelled to answer.
The court distinguished traditional Garrity-type compulsion (threats of removal/discipline tied to required official testimony) from a voluntary pre-employment interview where refusal results only in denial of further consideration.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument (State)	Defendant's Argument (Schimmel)	Held
Whether statements made during a mandatory-seeming pre-employment polygraph/interview were "compelled" under the Fifth Amendment so they and derived evidence must be suppressed	The polygraph interview was voluntary; Schimmel failed to assert the privilege and only faced denial of a possible job — a denied benefit, not a coercive penalty	The polygraph/interview imposed an unconstitutional penalty (loss of possible government employment) akin to Turley/Garrity, so answers were compelled and inadmissible	Court reversed suppression: no Garrity-type compulsion found — participation was voluntary, no property interest in employment, and Schimmel could have ended the process at any time

Lefkowitz v. Turley, 414 U.S. 70 (1973) (threatened disqualification from public contracting for asserting Fifth Amendment privilege constituted coercion)
Garrity v. New Jersey, 385 U.S. 493 (1967) (statements compelled under threat of removal from office are inadmissible in subsequent criminal prosecutions)
Minnesota v. Murphy, 465 U.S. 420 (1984) (Fifth Amendment privilege generally not self-executing; voluntariness depends on absence of penalty for asserting privilege)
Spevack v. Klein, 385 U.S. 511 (1967) (disbarment or loss of professional standing for asserting the privilege can be coercive)
Garner v. United States, 424 U.S. 648 (1976) (witnesses must assert the privilege or their statements are not "compelled," with limited exceptions)
Lefkowitz v. Cunningham, 431 U.S. 801 (1977) (conditioning benefits on waiver of Fifth Amendment rights can be coercive)
Graham v. Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources, 136 Ohio St.3d 125 (Ohio 2013) (adopting totality-of-circumstances test for Garrity coercion where explicit threats are absent)