The Associated Press
RICHMOND, Virginia- 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.
The case had been closely watched, 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.