DNA tests have confirmed the guilt of Roger Keith Coleman, whose dying claim of innocence had lived on past his 1992 execution.

The results were announced Thursday by Gov. Mark Warner, who took the unprecedented step of ordering the tests after years of arguments by Coleman's supporters that he was innocent.

"We have sought the truth using DNA technology not available at the time the commonwealth carried out the ultimate criminal sanction," Warner said. "The confirmation that Roger Coleman's DNA was present [at the crime scene] reaffirms the verdict and the sanction."

Coleman was convicted in 1982 of killing and raping his 19-year-old sister-in-law, Wanda McCoy, in her Grundy home. He was executed 10 years later, maintaining his innocence from the electric chair.

Warner is the first governor in the country to test the validity of an execution by ordering posthumous DNA tests, according to Eric Ferrero of The Innocence Project in New York.

Over the past six years, the request for testing has been a potential Holy Grail for opponents of the death penalty and a lingering irritant to the family of Coleman's victim and the community that convicted him.

There is no case in the United States in which scientific evidence has shown an innocent person was executed, according to the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington.

Had the tests proved Coleman innocent, some had reasoned, it could have undermined public support for capital punishment, which has been declining slightly in recent years as DNA analysis has turned up more and more examples of wrongful convictions.

While death penalty opponents had hoped Coleman's case would advance their cause, Thursday's announcement was welcomed by those who had always believed in his guilt.

"I felt like the weight of the entire world had been lifted from my shoulders," Grundy lawyer Tom Scott, who prosecuted Coleman, said of his reaction when the news from Warner reached him by cellphone Thursday afternoon.

Although Scott never doubted Coleman's guilt, he said he feared that deterioration of the evidence over the years might have skewed the DNA results. "Had the tests found him innocent, we certainly were at risk of having the criminal justice system undermined."

Michael McCoy, the brother of Wanda McCoy's husband, Brad, said the family has been forced to relive painful memories over the years while Coleman was portrayed in court hearings and media accounts as a victim.

"Wanda is the victim," McCoy said earlier this week. "Now my brother is the victim."

Neither Michael nor Brad McCoy could be reached Thursday.

"My prayers are with the family of Wanda McCoy at this time," Warner said in his statement.

Answering the questions

At the time of Coleman's conviction, circumstantial evidence was all that linked him to McCoy's murder. Although not conclusive, forensic tests available at the time suggested his involvement, finding that semen in McCoy's vagina came from someone with the same blood type as Coleman.

But Coleman's type B blood was shared by 10 percent of the population, and alibi witnesses placed him several miles from McCoy's home shortly before she was killed.

On appeal, Coleman's attorneys persuaded a judge in 1990 to order DNA tests not available at the time of his trial. The result: Coleman was within just 2 percent of the population that could have produced the semen.

Coleman was executed two years later on the strength of that and other evidence. He was 33.

"An innocent man is going to be murdered tonight," he said from the electric chair the night of May 20, 1992, as news outlets from around the country raised questions about the execution.

Those questions outlived the defendant. Centurion Ministries, a New Jersey organization that investigated the case and became convinced of Coleman's innocence, continued to search for evidence that would exonerate him.

In 2000, the group sought more advanced DNA tests that it said could finally resolve the matter.

Tests recently conducted by the Centre of Forensic Sciences in Toronto, ordered by Warner after the courts refused to intervene, appear to have done just that.

"The probability that a randomly selected individual unrelated to Roger Coleman would coincidentally share the observed DNA profile is estimated to be 1 in 19 million," a report from the lab stated.

It was enough to convince even Coleman's most ardent supporter. James McCloskey, head of Centurion Ministries, said Thursday at a news conference in Richmond that he was "numbed" by the results.

"We now know that Roger's proclamations of innocence, even as he sat strapped in the electric chair moments before his death, were false," McCloskey said.

"I always believed that Roger was completely innocent," McCloskey said. "I now know that I was wrong. This is a very bitter pill for me to swallow. However, the truth is the truth."

Asked if he felt betrayed by Coleman, McCloskey said: "Absolutely."

"How can somebody with such equanimity, such dignity, such quiet confidence, make those his last words when it looks like he did it?"

McCloskey also expressed sympathy for McCoy's family and said he hopes the results enable the community to have its peace.

"I'm sorry that I have created such stress within that family, but on the other hand, I don't regret pursuing the truth until we found it in this case," McCloskey said.

Setting a precedent?

For years, the possibility of Coleman's innocence has fueled policy debates, generated legal battles and produced news stories. The news of his guilt, however, was expected to be more short-lived.

"It's not news that a guilty man was executed," said David Bruck, director of the Virginia Capital Case Clearing House at the law school of Washington and Lee University. "I think it would be very silly for supporters of the death penalty to claim any vindication."

Others said that while not remarkable, the test results should reassure Virginians that the system works.

"Today is further proof that this is exactly the manner in which the death penalty has been, and will continue to be, employed in the commonwealth," Attorney General-elect Bob McDonnell said.

Bruck said Warner has set a precedent that he hopes will be followed whenever there is the opportunity to test a disputed conviction. "One would hope this would stiffen the spine of other governors," he said.

"It is still an outrage that Virginia fought this for so many years, at taxpayer expense, and for what?" he said, referring to opposition from two attorneys general to the retesting.

"When we're lucky enough to have the gold standard of truth, there's just no justification for refusing to follow the evidence wherever it leads."

Paul Enzinna, a lawyer who represented Centurion, said the test results "don't end the debate over the death penalty, and they don't end the debate over whether an innocent person has ever been executed."

Others say that repeated calls for such testing could eventually backfire on death penalty opponents.

"Going back and retesting the evidence is something opponents of the death penalty want to do in every case, because they're still looking for the innocent defendant who has been executed," said Mark Rushford, president of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, which supports the death penalty.

"And they're still looking today."

Staff writer Michael Sluss contributed to this report.