A murderer and a liar
Roger Coleman was excuted in 1992, convicted of having raped and murdered a woman in Virginia in 1981. Until his death, Coleman insisted he was innocent and he attracted a group of supporters that tried to prove him right. Theirs efforts were dealt a blow this week when a DNA test indeed tied Coleman to the crime.
Coleman’s case had become a focal point in the debate over capital punishment, with opponents insisting that DNA tests would prove that an innocent man was put to death and proponents saying that justice was served. Coleman had maintained his innocence in a series of television and newspaper interviews that generated attention around the world, and his backers tried for years to get the courts or politicians to order the tests. Warner, in his last weeks in office, agreed to allow the analysis and became the nation’s first governor to allow post-execution testing.
Legal scholars said the test results denied death penalty opponents a long-sought opportunity to put a human face on one of their most compelling arguments: that the U.S. justice system makes mistakes that result in the executions of innocent men.
“The opportunity to bring new people into the abolitionist movement has been lost,” said Phyllis Goldfarb, a professor at Boston College’s law school.
