The Virginia Supreme Court rejected the argument that the evidence could be made available for testing under the same law that guarantees a First Amendment right of access to court proceedings.

Refusing to resurrect the case of Roger Keith Coleman, the Virginia Supreme Court turned down a request Friday for DNA testing that would have settled the question of whether the state executed an innocent man.

Four newspapers and Centurion Ministries, an organization that investigates wrongful convictions, had sought access to biological evidence that still exists from the 1981 rape and murder for which Coleman was executed 10 years ago.

Coleman declared his innocence from the electric chair, and questions about the case still linger.

But the newspapers have no legal right to a semen sample that remains in the freezer of a California laboratory, the high court ruled in affirming a decision by Buchanan County Circuit Court Judge Keary Williams.

The court's unanimous opinion rejected the newspapers' argument that the evidence could be made available for testing under the same law that guarantees a First Amendment right of access to court proceedings.

"What the newspapers seek to do in this case is expand the definition of 'access' to include the right to conduct independent testing of evidence in criminal proceedings," Justice Donald Lemons wrote in the court's opinion.

Meg Stone, a Radford attorney who represented The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, The Richmond Times-Dispatch and the (Norfolk) Virginian-Pilot, said she was disappointed but not surprised by the ruling.

The newspapers and Centurion Ministries were exploring their options Friday, which included asking Gov. Mark Warner to order DNA tests of the evidence.

Unless state officials agree to examine the evidence - instead of having it destroyed as they have in other ended capital murder cases - they might encounter problems in recovering it from California scientist Edward Blake.

Blake said Friday that he would refuse to comply with any order from Virginia to return the evidence. "It belongs to me," said Blake, who conducted post-trial tests for Coleman's lawyers in 1990 after a judge ordered the sample sent to him from a Virginia crime lab.

Those tests bolstered the case against Coleman but did not conclusively link him to the crime.

Blake said he can now use more sophisticated testing that would definitively prove or disprove Coleman's guilt, assuming the evidence has not deteriorated. Considering that Virginia has destroyed such evidence in other cases following executions, Blake said he would refuse to surrender it.

"It's a fundamental violation of everything a democracy stands for to destroy evidence," he said.

"The fact that this kind of ruling came from a court in Virginia, where many of our founding fathers were from, is simply shameful," he said. "If the Supreme Court justices can't understand that, then they are unfit to serve this democracy."

Although Blake maintains that the evidence - a tiny drop of fluid stored in a vial - is his work product, he said he would not test it himself without the approval of a court.

It was unclear Friday whether Virginia will attempt to recover the evidence.

Attorney General Jerry Kilgore said he will talk with officials at the state lab and with police investigators before deciding what action to take.

What is clear, Kilgore said, is that Coleman's case should finally be put to rest more than two decades after he raped and killed his sister-in-law.

"Wanda McCoy was brutally raped and murdered in 1981," Kilgore said. "You have to have some finality to this for her friends and family."

Had the Supreme Court allowed the tests, it could have produced national repercussions in the debate on capital punishment. Although DNA has been used to free a number of men from death row, there has never been a case in the United States in which it determined that an innocent person was put to death.

Even if the tests confirmed Coleman's guilt, his supporters argued, it would enhance public confidence in the court system.

The Supreme Court disagreed, raising concerns about the precedent it might set for testing in other cases.

"We have no difficulty concluding that permitting testing of this type would not play a significant positive role in the functioning of the judicial process," the opinion stated.

"I find that to be nonsensical," said Jim McCloskey of Centurion Ministries, "and it befuddles me."

Staff writer Michael Sluss contributed to this report.