DNA tests confirm guilt of executed man

02:54 PM CST on Thursday, January 12, 2006
Associated Press

RICHMOND, Va. � New DNA tests confirmed the guilt of a man who went to his death in Virginia's electric chair in 1992 proclaiming his innocence, the governor said Thursday.

The case had been closely watched by both sides in the death penalty debate because no executed convict in the United States has ever been exonerated by scientific testing.

The tests, ordered by the governor last month, prove Roger Keith Coleman was guilty of the 1981 rape and murder of his sister-in-law, Gov. Mark R. Warner said.

Coleman was convicted and sentenced to death in 1982 for the murder of 19-year-old Wanda McCoy, his wife's sister, who was found raped, stabbed and nearly beheaded in her home in the coal mining town of Grundy.

The report from the Centre of Forensic Sciences in Toronto concluded there was almost no conceivable doubt that Coleman was the source of the sperm found in the victim.

"The probability that a randomly selected individual unrelated to Roger Coleman would coincidentally share the observed DNA profile is estimated to be 1 in 19 million," the report said.

A finding of innocence would have been explosive news and almost certainly would have had a powerful effect on the public's attitude toward capital punishment. Death penalty opponents have argued for years that the risk of a grave and irreversible mistake by the criminal justice system is too great to allow capital punishment.

"We have sought the truth using DNA technology not available at the time the commonwealth carried out the ultimate criminal sanction," Warner said in a statement. "The confirmation that Roger Coleman's DNA was present reaffirms the verdict and the sanction. Again, my prayers are with the family of Wanda McCoy at this time."

Initial DNA and blood tests in 1990 placed Coleman within the 0.2 percent of the population who could have produced the semen at the crime scene. But his lawyers said the expert they hired to conduct those initial DNA tests misinterpreted the results.

The governor agreed to a new round of more sophisticated DNA tests in one of his last official acts. Warner, who has been mentioned as a possible Democratic candidate for president in 2008, leaves office on Saturday.

Coleman's case drew international attention as the well-spoken inmate pleaded his case on talk shows and in magazines and newspapers. Time magazine featured the coal miner on its cover. Pope John Paul II tried to block the execution. Then-Gov. L. Douglas Wilder's office was flooded with thousands of calls and letters of protest from around the world.

Coleman's attorneys argued that he did not have time to commit the crime, that tests showed semen from two men was found inside McCoy and that another man bragged about murdering her.

"An innocent man is going to be murdered tonight," the 33-year-old said moments before he was electrocuted on May 20, 1992. "When my innocence is proven, I hope America will realize the injustice of the death penalty as all other civilized countries have."

Prosecutors said a mountain of other evidence pointed to Coleman as the killer: There was no sign of forced entry at McCoy's house, leading investigators to believe she knew her attacker; Coleman was previously convicted of the attempted rape of a teacher and was charged with exposing himself to a librarian two months before the murder; a pubic hair found on McCoy's body was consistent with Coleman's hair; and the original DNA tests placed him within a fraction of the population who could have left semen at the scene.

Four newspapers and Centurion Ministries, a New Jersey organization that investigated Coleman's case and became convinced of his innocence, sought a court order to have the evidence retested. The Virginia Supreme Court declined to order the testing in 2002, so Centurion Ministries asked Warner to intervene.

Thanks God! I read that heading and thought this was another Britney Spears post ....

Shannon,

Maybe I should've called it "Oops, he did it, again"?

Now, can the State force the various organizations to pay for the tests?

How about the family of the victim, any recourse for putting them through all this?

How long will this stay a news item. Any money on front page coverage?

This is some refreshing news. If only the media would spend as much time emphasizing this result as it did speculating before the results!

The local Austin fishwrap ran this story on page A11, below the fold. Proving, once again, that convicting and sentencing the guilty is not "news" to those who determine what is or isn't news.

quote:

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Originally posted by John Stride:
If only the media would spend as much time emphasizing this result as it did speculating before the results!

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On the way to work, I've already had to listen to two commercials for a new ABC series [sitcom?] called "Injustice" about "cases in which an innocent person has been wrongly convicted of a crime."

Hmm . . . considering the artistic liberties I've seen incorporated in the reporting of real cases, it should be downright nausiating. Especially when they have to start changing the outcomes of the real cases upon which they are loosely based to develop an interesting storyline.

From another AP article:

Death penalty opponents praised Warner's decision to order the testing but warned that Coleman's case does not mean the death penalty is infallible.

"Obviously, one case does not in any way reflect on the correctness of the other 1,000 executions we've had in the last 30 years," said Peter Neufeld, co-founder of the Innocence Project. "Other governors should take their lead from Governor Warner and do post-execution testing in their cases, because ... there's no reason not to -- it's all about getting to the truth."

The article

[Ed. - so, one case does not reflect on the other 1,000? anyone want to bet these folks change their tune if one of these DNA tests go the other way??? ]

[This message was edited by Shannon Edmonds on 02-22-06 at .]

From the hysterical tabloids' point of view, be sure that if other cases are tested post-execution and confirm the convicts' guilt, the lab tests were tainted in some way or the evidence has been meddled with at some point!

Tests reaffirm Coleman's guilt
Gov. Warner announces results of new DNA testing

Richmond Times-Dispatch
Thursday, January 12, 2006


Nearly a quarter-century of controversy surrounding Roger Keith Coleman was put to rest yesterday as DNA evidence showed Virginia did not execute an innocent man in 1992.

The 33-year-old coal miner baldly asserted he was not guilty while strapped in the electric chair. His last lie helped inspire years of efforts by believers to prove his innocence.

A Canadian laboratory has exposed the truth, estimating the odds that someone other than Coleman could have left the DNA "fingerprint" found in a vaginal swab taken from the victim to be 1 in 19 million.

"This means that Roger Coleman is the killer of Wanda McCoy," conceded James McCloskey, executive director of Centurion Ministries, who had believed Coleman innocent and fought years for the testing that yesterday proved him wrong.

The testing, opposed by some state officials but ordered by Gov. Mark R. Warner, vindicates the work of law enforcement, the jury, the judge and appeals courts in a case that drew international attention to -- and at times contempt for -- Virginia.

Tom Scott, a Grundy lawyer who helped prosecute Coleman, said that when he learned of the results, "I felt like the weight of the entire world was lifted off my shoulders. I never had any doubt about Coleman's guilt."

Asked why the case has been so contentious for so long, Scott said, "It was never about guilt or innocence. It was about the death penalty."

Warner, who released the test results yesterday, ordered the testing last month. He said advances in DNA technology made it possible to shed more light on Coleman's guilt or innocence.

In a prepared statement, Warner said, "My prayers are with the family of Wanda McCoy at this time." The McCoy family was notified of the results before they were made public, the governor's office said.

Peter Neufeld, a co-founder of the Innocence Project, said, "Our criminal-justice system must be based on finding the truth." He urged other governors to follow Warner's example.

It is unclear what effect the findings will have on the national debate on capital punishment.

Not one of the more than 1,000 people executed in the U.S. since the death penalty was allowed to resume in 1976 has been proved innocent.

Yesterday's findings come at a particularly inauspicious time for opponents of the death penalty in Virginia. The new session of the General Assembly just opened in Richmond, a city gripped by killing rampages that claimed the lives of nine people, three of them children, in one week.

A statement from Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty said: "Despite the confirmation of Roger Coleman's guilt, we continue to oppose his execution as we oppose and have opposed all executions."

McCloskey said that had the testing shown an innocent man was executed, "I think that would have had a tremendous effect on the anti-death-penalty movement, perhaps encouraging moratorium movements, even abolition.

"But those are not the set of facts that we have in this instance," he said.

Wanda Fay McCoy, 19, was raped and stabbed to death in her Grundy home on March 10, 1981. Her throat was cut, and she was still bleeding when her husband discovered the body.

Coleman, McCoy's brother-in-law, was a pallbearer at her funeral. He was convicted and sentenced to death in 1982 on strong circumstantial evidence.

Nevertheless, Coleman had an alibi, and he steadfastly maintained his innocence. His lawyers and supporters drew international attention to the case.

Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul II asked that his life be spared. Coleman made the cover of Time magazine shortly before he was executed.

In 1990, the man who sentenced Coleman to death, Buchanan County Circuit Court Judge Nicholas E. Persin, ordered DNA testing that was performed by Edward T. Blake, a scientist in California hired by Coleman's lawyers.

DNA testing was not available when Coleman was investigated and tried. Blake's testing further implicated Coleman, finding that he was within 2 percent of the population who could have raped McCoy.

It was the genetic material extracted by Blake in 1990 -- and kept frozen since then -- that was just tested. The original evidence was destroyed by the Virginia State Police in 1994 under its policy at that time.

Coleman was executed at the Greensville Correctional Center on the night of May 20, 1992.

As guards strapped him into the chair, he declared:

"An innocent man is going to be murdered tonight. When my innocence is proven, I hope Americans will recognize the injustice of the death penalty, as all other civilized countries have."

Fifty cameras and 14 satellite trucks lined the front of the prison. A corrections official said reporters were on hand from every continent except Africa.

Less than a week before the execution, the Independent, a London newspaper, ran the headline: "No deliverance in Virginia." The paper called Coleman "the man from the Appalachians facing execution on a technicality."

Coleman's supporters contended he was with a friend miles from the slaying and did not have time to reach the McCoy home along Slate Creek. Coleman's lawyers had sworn statements from Grundy residents who said a McCoy neighbor boasted of killing her.

But then-Gov. L. Douglas Wilder said he found no evidence Coleman was not guilty. He let the execution proceed after Coleman failed a last-minute lie-detector test. Wilder's office received more than 13,000 messages about the case, more than 99 percent urging clemency.

In 2000, four newspapers, including the Richmond Times-Dispatch, went to court seeking the testing of the material in Blake's lab. They argued that the truth, if available, should be known. But the courts turned down the request.

McCloskey, who was also seeking testing, then asked Warner to order it.

Negotiations among the state, Centurion Ministries and Blake led to an agreement last month. The testing was done by an independent lab with no ties to any of the parties: Ontario's Centre of Forensic Sciences in Toronto.

McCloskey took it on the chin yesterday. He said, "We, who seek the truth, must live or die by the sword of DNA."

"I had always believed in Roger's complete innocence. In my view, he had no motive, means or opportunity to do this crime. I now know that I was wrong. Indeed, this is a bitter pill to swallow," he said.

"How could somebody with such equanimity, such dignity, such quiet confidence, make those last words?" asked McCloskey, who added he felt betrayed.

Don Hill, one of the jurors in the case, said yesterday that the findings came as no surprise to him and that he hopes the second-guessing of the jury will now stop.

"Everybody had an opinion, but the evidence they used to pin him down was just like pinning a tail on a donkey," said Hill, a retired miner who lives in Vansant, just a few miles from Grundy.

Another juror, June C. Dotson of Grundy, said she felt vindicated, but she really hasn't thought about the case. "I never had any doubts. I was never worried," she said.

Mickey McGlothlin, the former Buchanan County commonwealth's attorney who prosecuted Coleman, said, "I would have been surprised if the results came out any other way."
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This story can be found at: http://timesdispatch.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=RTD/MGArticle/RTD_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1128769279378

"How could somebody with such equanimity, such dignity, such quiet confidence, make those last words?" asked McCloskey, who added he felt betrayed.

Because...criminals can sometimes lie? And really, look at how successful he was with those final words at causing trouble for the criminal justice system long after his death. Why shouldn't he lie then? A sudden confession wasn't going to do him any good, except on potential moral grounds, and someone who raped and murdered a woman just to serve as her pallbearer doesn't seem terribly interested in morality to me.

Some more reading for those interested in this topic ....

Versel Rush's op/ed

Supporters of dead killer can eat crow at DNA result

The Virginian-Pilot
January 14, 2006

Weird, wasn't it?

Watching death penalty foes - who worry that the state might execute an innocent man - praying that the c ommonwealth of Virginia had done just that.

Alas, DNA testing showed otherwise. On Thursday afternoon, we all learned the truth: Roger Keith Coleman, who died in the electric chair in 1992, was indeed a murderous pervert.

The Virginia justice system worked. Again. My condolences to all who hoped it hadn't.

I hesitate to point this out, but the profound disappointment expressed by some in the anti-capital-punishment camp was rather, ah, what's the right word ... h ypocritical? Distasteful? Unseemly?

Take your pick.

Truth is, they didn't really care about Coleman. What they wanted was a martyr. He was the best they could find.

A caveat: I respect those who oppose capital punishment on moral grounds. Honestly. My church condemns the practice. What I find disturbing is the callous indifference these folks frequently display toward the victims of crimes and their willingness to believe the drivel about innocence that echoes along death row.

Coleman's naive admirers really believed he was not guilty of the hideous 1981 killing in Grundy. After all, the condemned man proclaimed his innocence in the death chamber. Apparently that meant he had to be telling the truth.

So they stomped their feet about this miscarriage of justice for 13 years , through several gubernatorial administrations, until Gov. Mark Warner relented and ordered sophisticated new testing of old evidence.

Once the results were in, even Coleman's best friends had to admit that he had indeed raped and murdered his 19-year-old sister-in-law, Wanda McCoy.

An account in Friday's Pilot reminded us that he "nearly beheaded" her.

Lovely.

Coleman's supporters were devastated. The leader of a group that had pushed for the DNA testing told reporters that he had been sure Coleman was innocent, because he'd had no "motive" for the crime.

Motive? Please.

What exactly is a motive for rape?

All indications are that Roger Keith Coleman was a sex offender who was getting more and more aggressive. He'd attempted rape. He'd been charged with exposing himself . Finally, there was the McCoy atrocity.

Now that we know the truth, it's time for the Coleman fan club to go to McCoy's family and apologize for all the pain they inflicted during this relentless effort to portray her murderer as a victim.

It won't happen. They're too busy looking for another criminal to sanctify.

Before they do, they should learn a couple of lessons from the Roger Keith Coleman debacle.

The most important one is this: Never believe a killer. Ever. Even when his last words are "An innocent man is going to be murdered tonight."

Michael Paranzino, a spokesman for a pro-death penalty group said it best when he told the Associated Press on Thursday: "Stop the presses - I t turns out that rapists and killers are also liars. Roger Keith Coleman, like every killer on death row, professed his innocence until the very moment he took his last breath. � In short, Coleman was a killer. Everyone who said otherwise was dead wrong."

What's most alarming about Coleman's lies was not that he told them, but that so many people believed them.

Here's a tip for those who want to abolish the death penalty: Your arguments might be more persuasive if they weren't always accompanied by phony campaigns that try to turn sociopaths into heroes.

It never works.

Stolen Innocence

Death penalty foes make easy marks for vicious murderers.

BY BRIDGET JOHNSON
Wednesday, January 18
OpinionJournal.com

"This man might be innocent; this man is due to die," blared the May 18, 1992, cover of Time magazine. "Roger Keith Coleman was convicted of killing his sister-in-law in 1982. The courts have refused to hear the evidence that could save him." Accompanying the text was a full-cover photo of a shackled Coleman, looking morose in prison garb.

Before Coleman was sent to the electric chair two days later for the rape, stabbing and near-beheading of 19-year-old Wanda McCoy, his protestations of innocence had put an anti-death-penalty PR machine firmly in his corner. This man with a previous history of attempted rape became a cause c�l�bre telling his woeful tale of justice gone awry. "An innocent man is going to be murdered tonight," he declared before his electrocution.

A dramatic sound bite that proved hollow last week, when new DNA testing ordered by Virginia's Gov. Mark Warner proved Coleman's guilt. James McCloskey of Centurion Ministries, who had spent nearly two decades trying to prove Coleman's innocence, was befuddled, asking the Washington Post: "How can somebody, with such equanimity, such dignity, such quiet confidence, make those his final words even though he is guilty?"

It happens all the time. Killers rally sympathetic activists behind them by using the manipulative skills that are integral to their criminal careers.

Kevin Cooper is an inmate on California's death row who escaped execution on Feb. 9, 2004, when the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted a last-minute stay to retest evidence. This evidence withstood that retesting, and other defense arguments have been since shot down in federal district court. The appeals process on those findings is now working its way through the courts, and the earliest he may face execution again--if appeals go in favor of the state--may be late this year.

His case has slipped into the background lately as death-penalty foes stole the airways in hopes of clemency for Stanley "Tookie" Williams. Yet the two murderers share many of the same supporters. As the "Save Tookie" campaign gathered thousands of signatures petitioning for the quadruple killer's clemency, the "Save Kevin Cooper" Web site has been championing his cause and featuring his writings.

Cooper's case is one in which it's hard to imagine anyone jumping on his bandwagon. He was an inmate at the California Institution for Men in Chino, serving time for burglary, when he escaped on June 2, 1983. Two days later he broke into the Chino Hills home of the Ryen family as they were sleeping and killed the parents, Douglas and Peggy, along with 10-year-old Jessica Ryen and 11-year-old Christopher Hughes, a friend of Joshua Ryen, who was the only family member to survive. "The first time I met Kevin Cooper I was 8 years old and he slit my throat," Joshua Ryen testified at an April 22 hearing in U.S. District Court in San Diego. "He hit me with a hatchet and put a hole in my skull. . . . I laid there 11 hours looking at my mother who was right beside me."

But Cooper does not lack supporters: the likes of Jesse Jackson, Mike Farrell, Richard Dreyfuss, Sean Penn and Denzel Washington have come to his defense. One would think that appropriate monikers for Cooper would have career-sensitive celebrities running for the hills: Ax murderer. Child killer. Mass murderer.

It's apparently lost on them that the people they're dealing with are master manipulators. Ted Bundy gave a videotaped interview to James Dobson hours before his 1989 execution in which he blamed his crimes on violent pornography. On the tape, Bundy is in the midst of an emotional monologue when a phone rings in the distance. For the slightest second, Bundy breaks from character and his eyes dart in the direction of the phone, perhaps hoping a stay was waiting on the other end of the line. And just like that, he's back into his emotional testimony on the evils of violent porn. This video was shown in one of my college criminology classes as an example of the offender as a manipulator.

"Offenders who have become adept at manipulating can exert complete control over others, especially children," writes renowned criminal psychologist Eric Hickey in "Serial Murderers and Their Victims." Society still has an image, though, of the dangerous offender carrying on in a continuously depraved manner and incapable of rational discourse or "good deeds." Remember "Coed Killer" Ed Kemper's genius IQ, and his ability to convince a court psychiatrist of his excellent progress, even as a victim's head was in the trunk of his car outside; or serial killer John Wayne Gacy's charitable work with the Jaycees and dressing up as a clown at children's parties.

An anti-death-penalty group's Voices From Inside project lets killers such as Richard Allen Davis--whose murder of little Polly Klaas sparked California's "Three Strikes" law--seek pen pals, inviting God knows who into their manipulative world. "Greetings with a smile," reads Davis's introduction. "Could there be anyone who could take the time to see for themselves, just who I really am."

We shudder at the thought of "Night Stalker" Richard Ramirez or Yosemite killer Cary Stayner luring admirers through their court exposure, but how different is that from the flocks who are drawn to the sides of the likes of Williams, Coleman or Cooper to parrot their protestations of innocence despite overwhelming evidence?

And why wouldn't Williams have been a master manipulator? He was a gang leader, which requires a certain arm-twisting ability not only to keep operations running, but to recruit and build ranks. "Save Tookie" coordinator Barbara Becnel became convinced that the convicted murderer was a man on a mission. But was this a mission to save the 'hood or save his hide? Williams refused to cooperate in helping authorities clean up the Crips network. Regardless, like other killers before him, he won over scores who believed in his reformation through his "anti-gang efforts" and prose. "A close look at Williams' post-arrest and post-conviction conduct tells a story that is different from redemption," stated Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's clemency denial. And though not a children's book author, Cooper has been writing from behind bars for several years, essays posted on his Web site with sympathetic titles such as "Suffering in Silence" and "Good vs. Evil."

Death-penalty foes could simply cite their general opposition to capital punishment as sufficient reason why they want the likes of Cooper spared, or why they believed executing Williams and Coleman was wrong. But perpetuating conspiracy-laden arguments of framing and innocence cooked up by the offenders shows that their advocates are just caught up in the manipulation, championing unrepentant killers at the expense of their victims. These murderers know exactly what they're doing in chalking up the sympathy to corral their stable of supporters.

[Ms. Johnson is a columnist at the Los Angeles Daily News. She writes at gopvixen.blogs.com/.]

From the blogosphere:

All this talk about innocents behind bars reminds me of the story of a governor visiting the penitentiary in the late 1800s.

Asking prisoners about their stories, he was beseiged with innocent men seeking pardons. Finally, one guy admitted that he had done his crime and was looking forward to finishing the time he had to pay for his mistake. The governor immediately ordered the guilty man freed. In response to the shocked looks he received, he explained:

"I don't want this criminal in here corrupting all of these innocent men!"