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.Just like it's impossible to prove a negative, it's impossible to prove that an innocent person has never been executed.
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.
However, this is a setback but it is irrelevant whether he did the crime or not. Sure, the DP opponents were hoping for a case they could hang their hat on, but this one just confirmed in many people's mind that the innocent are not executed.
Killing people is morally wrong regardless, and it doesn't matter how heinous the crime was, or if the person is guilty or not. I'm sure many people are disapointed he wasn't innocent, just to prove their case, but I'm not. It would have been much worse if he was actually innocent.
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