Burden of Proof

From the start, Coleman intrigued her. "He was very bright; he read all the time -- science books and science fiction were his favorites." They talked once a week on the phone, and she saw him every six weeks or so when she visited the row. She grew to hold him in such high regard that she put him on the board of her organization.

For Deans, Coleman's guilt or innocence wasn't primary. She worked with plenty of men she knew were guilty. But he was different: quiet, brainy, direct. He told her about his dreams, including one in which he was strapped to the electric chair and she was holding him by his toe, pulling him away from death.

Deans never bought most of the pathetic "I was framed" stories she heard from inmates. But she came to believe that Coleman was either innocent or had no memory of committing the murder. "I have worked with psychopaths, and they're sort of obvious," says Deans. "They're unable to be in touch with their own consciences, but they are able to be in touch with what moves you and to feed you that." Roger, she says, was never smooth or slick, never seemed to be performing for her benefit. "I just did not get the sense that he thought he could pull the wool over my eyes, or that he was trying to."

He made a similar impression on Sharon Paul, a University of Virginia sophomore who responded to his ad in a student newspaper: "Thirteen steps from eternity. Death Row prisoner seeks sincere people to correspond with and for possible visits." He described himself and asked for photos, but added: "Sincerity is what counts."

"I was captured by the vulnerability: 'Here's me, and all I want is someone to write to me,' " Paul recalls. "It was letting the world see his loneliness. I guess I admired that honesty and openness from the very start."

She wrote to him, and within days he wrote back, describing his life in Grundy and on death row. He offered to answer any questions she had about the crime. "For what it's worth, I didn't do it," he told her.

He was charming and solicitous. He insisted on buying her gifts, even though he had little money. He sent her clippings from mail-order catalogues, asked her to send back multiple selections to ensure he chose something she liked that would still be a surprise. He made her cassette tapes of love songs he recorded off the radio. She recalls that he was devastated by the 1986 Challenger explosion. If they ever had a daughter, he wanted to name her after Christa McAuliffe, the teacher who died during the disaster.

They seldom talked of the future. "I was in denial of the possibility of anything other than his release," says Paul. "Roger, on the other hand, was much more realistic. He called himself an optimistic pessimist -- he hoped for the best but expected the worst."

Coleman needed a new lawyer to launch his appeal, and Deans hooked him up with Arnold & Porter, which takes great pride in doing pro bono work. The firm's lawyers filed a writ of habeas corpus -- a standard legal tool of prisoners seeking judicial review. When they lost in circuit court, the lawyers went to the Virginia Supreme Court, which rejected their appeal on the grounds that it was filed one day late. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the rejection by 6 to 3.

"This is a case about federalism," wrote Justice Sandra Day O'Connor for the majority, seemingly more concerned about state court prerogatives than the fact that Coleman's life was at stake.

The ruling became a rallying cry for opponents of capital punishment who saw it as a part of a campaign by the justices to streamline the appeals process and deliver condemned prisoners to the executioner more swiftly. But to cheat the electric chair, Roger Coleman needed to be more than just a cause. He needed new evidence -- and someone dedicated to finding it.

THE BACK WALL OF JIM MCCLOSKEY'S OFFICE IS HIS RÉSUMÉ. It holds a remarkable collection of photographs of the three dozen innocent people he has helped free from prison, most of them taken at the moment they emerged from behind bars.