Word: coleman
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...irrevocable of sanctions," and spoke of the "need for reliability in the determination that death is the appropriate punishment." But under Chief Justice William Rehnquist's leadership, the Supreme Court seems more concerned with finality than fairness. Frustrated by the mounds of habeas corpus petitions that clog federal dockets -- Coleman's current petition, which includes the Commonwealth of Virginia's rebuttal, is more than 4 1/2 in. thick -- the court has sharply curtailed the ability of state prisoners, including capital felons, to approach federal courts with challenges to their convictions or sentences. "It is not clear to me what...
Roger Keith Coleman's case is filled with the kinds of errors that make federal review so vital. There is an allegation that Coleman's trial may have been tainted by a biased juror; that his lawyers made some major blunders; that another man may have committed the crime. But tidy procedural obstacles have blocked Coleman's attempts to obtain a federal evidentiary hearing. With the clock ticking toward his execution, it is reasonable to ask: Just what does it take to get a reconsideration of a conviction that brings a sentence of death...
...Coleman is not on death row because some witness claimed to see him murder Wanda McCoy. Or because someone saw him enter her house. Or because his fingerprints were found in the house, on her body or on a murder weapon. He is not even in trouble because someone offered a plausible motive for Coleman's wanting his sister-in-law dead. The case against Coleman is built solely on circumstantial evidence: bits of hair, blood, semen that may be his, but then again...
...Coleman sympathizers find this evidence pretty thin; detractors think it is solid. "I'm not only convinced beyond a reasonable doubt," says Tom Scott, a Grundy attorney who acted as a special prosecutor during Coleman's trial. "I'm convinced beyond every imaginable and conceivable doubt of Coleman's guilt, based on that evidence alone...
...though he had no alibi at all. At the trial, six witnesses vouched for Coleman's movements the night of the murder. He went to a grocery to buy some antacid pills; he reported for work at a coal mine, only to learn that the night shift had been laid off; he picked up his work clothes at the mine, then stopped to chat with a friend; he visited another friend in a trailer park; he went home to his wife. Important testimony came from Philip Vandyke, a friend of Coleman's, who could point to the precise time...