Warner Orders DNA Testing In Case of Man Executed in '92

By Maria Glod and Michael D. Shear
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, January 6, 2006

Virginia Gov. Mark R. Warner has ordered DNA testing that could prove the guilt or innocence of a man executed in 1992, marking the first time a governor has asked for genetic testing of someone put to death.

The analysis, which began last month, comes in the case of Roger K. Coleman, a convicted killer whose proclamations of innocence -- including on the night of his execution -- raised concern nationwide over whether the wrong man died in the electric chair.

Warner's decision marks a dramatic turnaround in Virginia, where officials and judges have routinely refused to reexamine evidence in criminal cases after a defendant's conviction and have been steadfast in their denials of post-execution requests. Results of the Coleman tests, which are being conducted by scientists in a Toronto laboratory, could be announced before Warner (D) leaves office next week.

"This is an extraordinarily unique circumstance, where technology has advanced significantly and can be applied in the case of someone who consistently maintained his innocence until execution," Warner said yesterday in a statement. "I believe we must always follow the available facts to a more complete picture of guilt or innocence."

If Coleman were exonerated, it would be the first time in the United States that an executed man is cleared through genetic tests.

Ira Robbins, an American University criminal law professor, said that if Coleman was innocent, it would sway many Americans who are unsure about capital punishment to oppose it. But even if the tests confirm that Coleman was a killer, he said, it could spark a movement nationwide to test more old cases.

"It could be the biggest turning point in death penalty abolition," Robbins said. "Let's assume it comes back that he was proved innocent. Here is the case that the death penalty opponents have been looking for for a long time -- that we have executed an innocent person."

Coleman, a coal miner from Grundy, a small mountain town in southwest Virginia, was convicted and sentenced to death in the 1981 rape and stabbing of his sister-in-law, 19-year-old Wanda McCoy.

Brad McCoy, who was married to Wanda McCoy when she was slain, said he remains convinced that Coleman killed her and said he's been hurt by the questions raised about Coleman's guilt.

"I really don't understand why it's being done," said McCoy, who has remarried and has two children. "We keep talking about Roger Coleman as the victim. Wanda McCoy was the victim. I have no doubt in my mind it will prove him guilty. Where does it end?"

In recent years, state courts, including the Virginia Supreme Court, have refused requests by Centurion Ministries, a New Jersey-based charity that investigates wrongful convictions, and several media organizations to allow modern testing of evidence gathered at the crime scene.

The evidence has been held in a freezer at a California DNA laboratory by Edward Blake, the forensic scientist who performed more primitive tests in 1990 that put Coleman within 2 percent of the population that could have produced the sample. Blake was barred from testing the evidence without permission from Virginia, but he did not return it for fear it would be destroyed.

After repeated appeals from Centurion, Warner reversed the state's longstanding opposition and ordered tests early last month. Although it is possible that the results will be inconclusive, Blake said he thinks more advanced testing is likely to produce a more definitive result.

Jim McCloskey, Centurion's executive director, yesterday praised Warner's decision. He recalled a meeting with Coleman in the hours before the execution when he promised he'd continue working to prove Coleman's claims of innocence.

"It's my expectation that the DNA tests will prove, once and for all, that Roger Coleman is a completely innocent man," McCloskey said. "If I'm wrong then I'm wrong. But with the tests we can find the truth."

Virginia -- the first state to create a DNA databank to solve crimes -- has become the first to engage in widespread genetic testing in old cases in an effort to see whether new technology will uncover any wrongful convictions.

After a recent review of 31 old criminal cases resulted in the exoneration of two men who spent years in prison for rapes they did not commit, Warner last month ordered the review of thousands of other old cases from the 1970s and '80s, before the advent of DNA testing. In all, five men who served 91 years in prison have been exonerated in the state over the past several years.

The testing in Coleman's case marks only the second time nationwide that DNA tests have been performed after the death of an inmate facing execution. In 2000, tests ordered by a Georgia judge on evidence in the case of Ellis W. Felker, who was executed in 1996, were inconclusive. Genetic tests exonerated Florida inmate Frank L. Smith in 2000, several months after he died of natural causes while awaiting execution.

During Coleman's trial, authorities said there was compelling evidence of guilt, including hair on McCoy's body that was similar to Coleman's and the account of a jailhouse informant. Officials also noted that he had been convicted of attempted rape in 1977.

But Coleman maintained his innocence in a series of television and newspaper interviews that generated attention around the world. Coleman said he had an alibi and would not have had time to commit the killing. Defense attorneys also have gathered affidavits from people who said another man boasted of killing McCoy. Time magazine featured his case in a cover story titled "Must This Man Die?"

The morning of his execution, as L. Douglas Wilder, the governor at the time, debated his fate, Coleman was secretly taken to a police building for a lie-detector test. He failed.

After he was strapped into the electric chair on May 20, 1992, Coleman, then 33, read this statement: "An innocent man is going to be murdered tonight. When my innocence is proven, I hope Americans will realize the injustice of the death penalty as all other civilized countries have."