Virginia high court won't order new DNA test

By The Associated Press

11.05.02

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RICHMOND, Va. — The Virginia Supreme Court has refused to order new DNA testing in the case of a killer who was executed 10 years ago, rejecting newspapers' public-information claim.

Four newspapers and a group that investigates wrongful-conviction claims had asked the court to overturn Buchanan County Circuit Judge Keary R. Williams' decision not to turn over the semen samples in the case of Roger Keith Coleman.

"Certainly, the right to test evidence in a criminal case has not been historically extended to the press and general public," the court said in its unanimous ruling on Nov. 1.

Coleman was executed for the March 10, 1981, rape and murder of his sister-in-law, Wanda Faye McCoy, in Grundy. Coleman and his supporters always maintained he was innocent, and the case attracted international attention.

DNA tests strongly suggested Coleman was guilty, but Princeton, N.J.-based Centurion Ministries claimed that advances in testing procedures could provide more-conclusive results.

The newspapers — The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, the Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch and The Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk — contended the public had a right to know the results of modern testing. The court rejected the newspapers' claims that the testing should be allowed under the First Amendment and the Virginia Freedom of Information Act.

"No one has suggested that access to evidence presented at trial or post-trial proceedings has been denied," Justice Donald Lemons wrote. "What the newspapers want is the ability to cause the biological material to be retested and generate a new scientific report, thereby altering, manipulating, and/or destroying existing evidence in order to create new evidence."

State Attorney General Jerry Kilgore said a ruling in favor of the newspapers would have set a bad precedent. "You have to have some finality, and that's what the commonwealth's argument had been all along," he said.

Meg Stone, attorney for the newspapers, said a ruling could have been narrowly tailored to apply only in extraordinary cases.

"I'm disappointed the Supreme Court didn't take the opportunity to find that the newspapers and the public had a right of access broad enough to allow the testing under these very unusual facts," she said.

The biological evidence in the Coleman case has been frozen in a California laboratory for 12 years. Kilgore said no decision had been made on what to do with the evidence. Stone said she still hoped the state would retest it.

Virginia courts have never allowed DNA testing on evidence in a case where the convicted person has been executed. Similar post-execution requests were made in the cases of Joseph O'Dell III, who was executed in 1997, and Derek R. Barnabei, who was executed in 2000.

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Newspapers ask for retesting of executed killer's DNA
Attorney says Virginia high court has 'a historic opportunity, perhaps a one-time opportunity' to expand public access to evidence in court cases.  09.13.02