Related
Translate
Previous entry: Lost years of ’satanic panic’ children
Next entry: Kenya orders crackdown on racketeering banned sect
Get RNB via RSS
 |
RNB's RSS feed What is this? |
Get RNB via Email
 |
 Subscribe by Email What is this? |
Follow: Twitter
Most Popular
This Week:
- Guyana’s Jonestown suicide site gets plaque
- Scientology practices ‘putting people at risk’
- Recession: Muslim schools in UK under threat of closure
- World’s oldest ocean-going passenger ship, ministry ship Doulos, to stop sailing
- Scientology’s feet held to the fire in Australia: Struggle between a church and the state
- 1-year prison term for man who participated in cyber attack on Church of Scientology Web sites
- Australian police take up complaints about Scientology
- Born in U.S., a Radical Cleric Inspires Terror
- ‘World’s biggest animal sacrifice’ begins
- Pakistan Militants Bomb CD Shop For Selling ‘Jesus Film’
DNA Tests Confirm Executed Va. Man Guilty
More articles on this topic: Death PenaltyDNA Tests Confirm Man Executed in 1992 for Rape, Murder in Virginia Was Guilty
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, a spokeswoman for 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’s spokeswoman Ellen Qualls 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.
A finding of innocence would have been explosive news and could have had a powerful effect on the public’s attitude toward capital punishment. Death penalty opponents have been warning for years that the risk of a grave and irreversible mistake by the criminal justice system is too great to allow capital punishment.
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.”
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.
What You Can Do From Here
|
Read More Articles On These Topics
Share, Blog About, Bookmark, or Email This Article
Subscribe
Read Another Article
Previous entry: Lost years of ’satanic panic’ children Next entry: Kenya orders crackdown on racketeering banned sect
RNB Homepage with latest headlinesFind Related Information
Find Related Books
|
Share This Article
To share this page simply copy and paste one of these URL's:
