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| A statue of a coal miner stands outside the
courthouse where Roger Coleman was tried and convicted. (Photo
Courtesy John Tucker) |
(UPDATE: DNA tests conducted in January 2006 confirmed the original guilty verdict in this case. Click here for more on this story.)
Law enforcement officials in Virginia are embracing the power
of DNA to reveal the truth. But they are resisting one DNA test
that could reveal a mistake and shake the public's faith in the
criminal justice system. Since 1976, one hundred people have been
freed from death row, 12 because of DNA. Opponents of the death
penalty say these numbers expose a flawed system that more than
likely has executed innocent people. In fact, that's never been
proven, but now DNA could answer the question: did the state of
Virginia kill an innocent man 10 years ago?
Grundy, Virginia is a remote, small town that sits in a deep
ravine in the heart of the Appalachian hills. On most days, the
mile-long freight trains, laden with coal dug from the shafts
deep beneath the scarred countryside, rumble and rattle through
the town. In March of 1981, Grundy's monotony was interrupted
by the rape and murder of 19-year-old Wanda McCoy in a small,
white house overlooking the bubbling waters of Slate Creek. McCoy
was raped, stabbed, and her throat slashed so violently that she
was practically decapitated. Police quickly focused on her brother-in-law,
Roger Keith Coleman, a white coal miner who'd been jailed once
for attempted rape. Coleman was tried, convicted and sentenced
to death. For 10 years, along with a network of lawyers and supporters,
Coleman insisted he was innocent; but by the spring of 1992 -
as the rains swelled the waters of Slate Creek - Coleman's legal
remedies were exhausted and he was executed. Jim McCloskey fought
for years to save his life, and is still trying to clear his name.
"I promised Roger Coleman the night he was executed [that]
I would do all within my power to prove that he was innocent,"
says McCloskey. "Those were my last words to a dying man."
McCloskey is a former management consultant who founded Centurion
Ministries in Princeton, New Jersey, where he works to get the
falsely convicted out of jail and sometimes off of death row.
On the walls of his office, framed newspaper pages tell the stories
of the 25 men he's helped to free in the last 20 years. Also on
the wall, the cover of Time Magazine from May 19th, 1992, the
day before Roger Coleman was executed. It shows a picture of Coleman
and the caption, "This man might be innocent. This man is
due to die."
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| Roger Coleman in prison, before he was executed.
(Photo Courtesy John Tucker) |
Ten years on, Jim McCloskey remains convinced Coleman was innocent,
and he thinks DNA can prove it. At issue is a small, carefully
preserved vial that contains a few drops of fluid from a vaginal
swab taken from Wanda McCoy the night she was murdered. The evidence
has never been subjected to modern DNA analysis, and McCloskey
and several major newspapers have gone to court in Virginia to
win the right to test it. "I would hope that we would all
want to discover the truth of the matter. What's the argument
for this not to be done?" asks McCloskey. Officials in Virginia
have argued in court that the case is closed, and that there's
nothing to suggest that Roger Coleman was innocent. The state's
attorney general, Jerry Kilgore, points out that DNA analysis
available at the time didn't rule out Coleman as the murderer.
That's true, but neither did it prove his guilt. But Kilgore says
the evidence in the Coleman case has been "tested, retested,
and re-retested," and it is now long past time to move on.
"All the DNA evidence points to Roger Coleman as being the
culprit of this terrible crime."
Back in Grundy, a bronze statue of a coal miner, tarnished by
the weather, stands in front of the gray-stone courthouse where
Roger Coleman was convicted and sentenced. Phillip Van Dyke is
an old high school buddy of Coleman's, who believes the pressure
to solve the case that terrorized this quiet community 20 years
ago led to a rush to judgment. Van Dyke recalls the sign that
a member of the town posted right beside the courthouse where
Coleman was being tried, which read: "It's time for another
hanging in Grundy."
"How," Van Dyke wonders, "do you have a trial
inside that court house? It's obvious that people's minds were
made up."
Van Dyke was a witness for Coleman's defense who challenged a
crucial piece of the prosecution's case. Prosecutors said Wanda
McCoy was murdered at about 10:30 in the evening, but Van Dyke
says that's just when he stopped to talk to Coleman after Coleman
left work several miles from the victim's home. Van Dyke says
there was no reason for Coleman to murder his sister-in-law, but
even if he wanted to, he could not have done it in the time frame
laid out by prosecutors. A witness for the prosecution put Coleman
closer to McCoy's house just before the murder, but that still
would have left only a few minutes for Coleman to park his truck,
wade across Slate Creek, walk a hundred yards up to Wanda McCoy's
house and commit the crime. But Tom Scott, who prosecuted the
case and still lives in Grundy, says that's all the time Coleman
needed. "He certainly didn't go there to make love to this
woman," says Scott. "He went there, slit her throat,
he stabbed her twice in the chest, he raped her…and quite
frankly, I don't think that encounter took more than five or 10
minutes."
Scott built his case with circumstantial evidence. There was testimony
from a jailhouse snitch, but no witnesses. Blood and hair tests
pointed to Coleman, but they weren't conclusive. Meanwhile, Coleman
was represented by two court-appointed attorneys trying their
first capital case, who failed to present important evidence to
rebut the prosecution's case.
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| The house where Wanda Fay Thompson was raped
and murdered. Above, the house of the neighbor alleged to
have admitted to her murder. (Photo Courtesy John
Tucker) |
And then there were dramatic claims by several people in Grundy,
including a young woman named Teresa Horn, who said another man,
a neighbor of Wanda McCoy's, admitted to the murder. Horn was
reluctant to go public, but years after Coleman was convicted,
she finally came forward and made a statement to a local television
station. The next day, she died of a drug overdose, and to this
day, Jim McCloskey and others in Grundy suspect she was silenced.
McCloskey says, before she died and after much prodding, he convinced
Horn to give him a sworn affidavit. "She was a scared and
shaken women," recalls McCloskey, "because she was afraid
that if she did come forward that the real killer would kill her."
McCloskey spent years gathering evidence in support of Coleman's
innocence, which never made it into court. That's because lawyers
handling Coleman's appeal misread a deadline and filed papers
one day late. That clerical error led to a string of legal defeats
that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which finally
ended Coleman's 10-year legal battle for his life.
But McCloskey says Coleman's execution didn't resolve a crucial
question: "Did the Commonwealth of Virginia execute an innocent
man or a guilty man?"
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| Roger Coleman with Sharon Paul, with whom
he corresponded while in prison. (Photo Courtesy John
Tucker) |
The answer to McCloskey's question could reside in the vaginal
swab, a few drops of which have been stored in the lab of Dr.
Edward Blake, the highly regarded forensic scientist. After Coleman
was convicted, DNA analysis available at the time placed him in
about 2 percent of the population that could have committed the
crime. Dr. Blake says, if Virginia officials would let him test
it again with today's technology, he could answer the question
definitively. But Blake says, "every effort was made by the
Virginia Attorney General to stop that process." Virginia
officials want Blake to send the evidence back to Richmond. So
does Tom Scott, the former prosecutor, who believes Coleman's
advocates are using the evidence to push a political agenda. "If
perchance the DNA test were to be conducted," Scott says,
"and deflects attention away from Mr. Coleman, then they
would certainly use that to beat the bandwagon to attempt to have
capital punishment outlawed." That may be the one point on
which the two sides are in full agreement. Washington, D.C. attorney
Paul Enzinna, who represents Centurion Ministries and the newspapers
pushing for the test, says advocates of Mr. Coleman and the press
would "shout it from the rooftops" if the test proved
Coleman was innocent. "The state keeps telling the citizens
that we need the death penalty and that we're dong it right,"
says Enzinna. "The public has a right to know if the state
is doing it right."
Enzinna fears that to avoid potential embarrassment, Virginia
will destroy the evidence if it gets hold of it. Not true, says
Attorney General Jerry Kilgore. But Kilgore argues that the doctrine
of finality requires that at some point criminal cases must be
concluded and closed for good. "We have to some day look
to finality of judgment," Kilgore contends. "We feel
certain in Virginia that Roger Coleman committed the crime and
was punished appropriately." Such statements enrage Edward
Blake, the forensic scientist, who argues that the constitution
says nothing about a "doctrine of finality. Blake says he's
not opposed to the death penalty, and believes the test could
well confirm Coleman's guilt. But he says it's important to be
sure. "The way I understand the democratic process,"
says Blake, "is the public has a right to know about the
actions of the government."
The decision to test or not is now in the hands of the Virginia
Supreme Court. As he stands in front of an open refrigerator that
contains the small vial of evidence, Blake says he will not test
it without the court's permission. But he also says that he will
not send it back to Virginia, whatever the court decides. "Nobody
can force me to send it back," Blake says defiantly. "At
issue here is the public's right to know."
(UPDATE: DNA tests conducted in January 2006 confirmed the original guilty verdict in this case. Click here for more on this story.)
