Gov. Mark Warner appears willing to order DNA testing to determine whether Virginia executed an innocent man in 1992, according to a forensic scientist involved in the case.

Edward Blake, who has the evidence that could confirm Roger Keith Coleman's guilt or exonerate him posthumously, said the governor's office has recently shown an interest in tests that were not possible at the time of Coleman's 1982 trial.

Ever since Coleman was put to death -- maintaining his innocence from the electric chair -- questions about the case have transcended the stone courthouse in Buchanan County where he was convicted of raping and murdering his sister-in-law.

In a case that received national publicity at the time, Blake was hired by Coleman's lawyers to conduct post-trial DNA testing on biological evidence that strongly suggested, but never conclusively proved, that Coleman's jury was right.

Since then, Blake has kept the remaining evidence in a freezer at his California laboratory.

Earlier this week, Blake said he had recently received a letter from Warner's office indicating an interest in having the remaining evidence tested, this time using advanced technology that was not available for the first round of testing.

Centurion Ministries, a New Jersey organization that investigated Coleman's case and believes he was innocent, asked Warner in February 2003 to order the testing.

"As far as I know, it's just a matter of working out some details," Blake said.

Warner spokeswoman Ellen Qualls confirmed Tuesday that the governor's office had been negotiating with Blake in recent weeks. But no decision has been made, she said.

While cognizant of the issue's potential to cause turmoil in Buchanan County, Warner has also said he wants to be sure that the evidence has remained uncontaminated over the years and that another test would yield valid results.

"We've gone to great lengths to work with Centurion Ministries," Qualls said. The governor is proceeding cautiously, she added, because "the implications are profound."

Although the life of a condemned man is no longer at stake, the testing of biological evidence from a 1981 crime scene could play a major role in shaping the debate over how capital punishment is implemented today.

If the tests were to find that Coleman was innocent -- a prospect that many people familiar with the case say is unlikely -- it would be the first time in the United States that scientific evidence has shown that an innocent person was executed, according to the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C.

Well aware of the potential for Coleman's case to aid their cause, death penalty opponents have followed the case closely and urged Warner at every turn to order the tests.

Jack Payden-Travers of Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty has dogged the governor on radio call-in shows for nearly three years. He said he suspects that politics played a large role in Warner's decision to delay a decision until the final weeks of his administration.

If Warner were to order the tests now, the results would likely not be known until after he left office.

"He comes off smelling like a rose because he can say: 'I have let the truth be known,' " Payden-Travers said. "But he doesn't have to deal with the political fallout of the innocence of someone who has been executed."

With Warner being mentioned as a possible presidential candidate, ordering the tests in Coleman's case could play well to voters in states where the death penalty does not carry as much support as in Virginia, Payden-Travers said.

In their most recent radio conversation, Warner all but promised that he would order the testing, saying "it's just a matter of working out the procedures," Payden-Travers said.

Blake said he has received similar assurances: "The governor's office has made moves to have the sample tested. Whether or not that's going to come to fruition, and I expect that it will, will be up to the governor's office."

Although the request for DNA testing has yet to reach Warner's desk for a final decision, negotiations with Blake in recent weeks appear to have removed some complications.

Last year, Blake insisted that he do the tests himself. He threatened to refuse to turn the evidence over to Virginia, noting that the state has destroyed biological material in other death penalty cases that could have been subjected to post-trial testing.

Blake said he recently agreed to back off that demand in the interest of seeing the issue resolved.

The evidence at issue is a semen sample taken from the body of Coleman's sister-in-law. Wanda McCoy was found dead in her home on the banks of Slate Creek, which runs through the town of Grundy in far Southwest Virginia. She had been raped and her throat was slashed.

Because DNA testing did not exist at the time of Coleman's trial, authorities could only use blood typing on the sample to narrow the pool of suspects to include Coleman. Since then, Centurion Ministries has argued, advances in technology make it possible to either confirm his guilt or exonerate him with one final test of the evidence.

Joined by four newspapers, Centurion Ministries first asked the courts to allow DNA testing. Rebuffed by a Buchanan County circuit judge and the Virginia Supreme Court, the organization then turned to the governor's mansion as a last resort.

The sample in Blake's freezer is so small that a final examination would likely consume it, the scientist has said earlier. And there's no way to be sure that it will produce meaningful test results.

The only way to find out would be to do what for years has only been talked about: Remove the evidence from a small plastic vial where it has been held for the past 15 years and conduct the tests.