http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/13/national/13dna.html
January 13, 2006
DNA Ties Man Executed in '92 to the Murder He Denied
By JAMES DAO
WASHINGTON, Jan. 12 - Thirteen years after Roger K. Coleman went to the electric chair declaring, "An innocent man is being murdered tonight," a new DNA test has found that he was almost certainly the source of genetic material found in the body of his murdered sister-in-law, Virginia officials announced on Thursday.
The finding was a stunning blow to a lay minister who for nearly 18 years argued for Mr. Coleman's innocence, and it vindicated the prosecutors who won Mr. Coleman's conviction in 1982 and the governor, L. Douglas Wilder, who allowed his execution to proceed 10 years later.
"The confirmation that Roger Coleman's DNA was present reaffirms the verdict and the sanction," said Gov. Mark Warner, who ordered the test last week. It was the first time that a governor had ordered a DNA test involving an executed person.
The testing was closely watched across the nation because of the belief that it would provide powerful momentum to death penalty abolitionists if it were to prove that an innocent man had been put to death.
Yet even after Thursday's announcement, critics of capital punishment said Mr. Warner's decision set an important precedent that might encourage other governors, judges and prosecutors to allow postexecution DNA analysis in disputed capital punishment cases.
"The real issue is not whether one man was in fact guilty or innocent, it's rather that he set the example for what the other 49 governors should do on the hundreds of cases where DNA material still exists from people who have been executed," said Peter Neufeld, co-director of the Innocence Project, a legal clinic that has helped exonerate 172 inmates, often through DNA tests.
Supporters of the death penalty said the test was also significant because it proved that the criminal justice system had worked, and they predicted that the confirmation of Mr. Coleman's guilt would undermine future efforts to exonerate death row inmates.
The case gained international attention, with Time magazine putting Mr. Coleman on its cover and Pope John Paul II urging that his execution be stayed. But Governor Wilder, a Democrat, rejected a clemency petition, and Mr. Coleman died proclaiming his innocence.
-Rudey
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