For the past 14 years, evidence that could determine if Virginia executed an innocent man has sat in a small plastic vial stored in the freezer of a California laboratory.

Gov. Mark Warner is expected to decide in the coming weeks whether to order new DNA testing on the evidence, about one-fifth of a drop of sperm recovered from the body of a woman who was raped and murdered in her Grundy home.

The results could answer a long-lingering question: Was Roger Keith Coleman put to death in 1992 for a crime he did not commit?

As Warner nears a decision on what he calls a "tough issue," the matter could be complicated further by a dispute over who would conduct the tests.

Edward Blake, the forensic scientist who has kept the remaining sample frozen since he performed initial DNA tests in 1990, said this week he will not hand over the evidence if the governor were to order it tested by Virginia authorities.

"There is no logical, rational, scientific basis for that sample to ever leave this laboratory, and if I have anything to say about it, it won't leave this laboratory," Blake said in a telephone interview from his office in Richmond, Calif.

Blake's position could strain an already uneasy relationship with Virginia authorities.

His work has recently raised questions about the handling of DNA evidence in the case of exonerated death row inmate Earl Washington. And he has been an outspoken critic of the state's reluctance to test the Coleman evidence.

A request that Warner order the tests - something a Buchanan County judge and the Virginia Supreme Court have refused to do - has been sitting on the governor's desk for more than a year.

"Either have the b---s to do it, or have the b---s to say 'No, we're going to conceal this from the public,'" Blake said. "Do one or the other, governor, so the public can judge you for what you are."

The most reliable tests, Blake said, would be conducted by him at his laboratory. "The state of Virginia has a vested interest" in tests that would either confirm Coleman's guilt or be inconclusive, he said.

If Coleman were to be exonerated posthumously - which many people familiar with the case consider unlikely - it would mark the first time in U.S. history that scientific evidence has shown that an innocent man was executed.

Capital punishment opponents have followed the case closely, keenly aware that it could turn public sentiment their way. Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty has distributed 4,500 postcards urging Warner to order DNA testing in Coleman's case. "Please allow the truth to be known," the cards implore.

Warner spokeswoman Ellen Qualls declined to comment on the question of who might do the tests because the governor has yet to decide whether they should even be conducted.

"We would note that he's under a court order to return the sample," she said of Blake.

That order dates to 2001, when Buchanan County Circuit Court Judge Keary Williams refused to order DNA tests sought by four newspapers and Centurion Ministries, a New Jersey organization that investigated Coleman's case and became convinced of his innocence. Williams ordered Blake to return the evidence to Virginia.

However, the order was stayed while the case was appealed. After the Virginia Supreme Court declined to order testing in 2002, Centurion Ministries asked the governor to intervene. Throughout the lengthy process, the state has made no effort to collect the evidence.

If ordered to turn the evidence over to Virginia, Blake said he would refuse and then invite major U.S. newspapers to document the showdown.

Blake has had the sample in cold storage since 1990, when he was selected by Coleman's attorneys to perform DNA testing. At the time, Coleman was challenging his conviction, and his attorneys hoped technology not available at the time of his 1982 trial would clear him.

It did not. Blake found that Coleman was within 2 percent of a population that could have produced the sperm sample.

Coleman was executed in 1992, maintaining his innocence from the electric chair.

News of the case spread far beyond the mountains of Buchanan County, where Coleman's sister-in-law, Wanda McCoy, was raped and killed in her home on the banks of Slate Creek. The circumstantial case used to convict Coleman was questioned in a blitz of national publicity surrounding the execution.

Since then, DNA testing more advanced than what Blake used in 1990 has emerged that could resolve the issue once and for all, Centurion Ministries has maintained in court papers.

Jim McCloskey, executive director of the group, said he would prefer that Virginia's Division of Forensic Science conduct the tests. "Our strong and clear preference is that Blake not do the work," he said. Centurion Ministries has had concerns with Blake's analysis since his earlier tests implicated Coleman.

"I'd hate to see this get hung up on a turf battle over who's going to do the testing," said Paul Enzinna, a Washington, D.C., attorney who represents the group. "But I have no reason to believe there's going to be a turf battle."

Blake, however, sees a potential battle looming.

"Absolutely," he said when asked if Virginia authorities might balk at his requirement that the evidence be tested in his laboratory. "Because they know that I'm someone who can't be manipulated."

Blake's insistence that he perform the tests is based partly on scientific grounds. The sample is his work product, he said, and transporting it across the county could damage the 23-year-old piece of evidence.

But in explaining his position, he also cites philosophical differences with Virginia.

He has criticized the state for destroying evidence in other capital cases where guilt remained a post-execution issue. With questions about Coleman's guilt lingering, and with DNA testing now available that could answer those questions, Blake finds it unconscionable that the state would try to keep that information from the public.

"The ultimate power in any democracy rests in the hands of an informed public," he said. "Your Supreme Court has taken the position that 'we don't want the public informed.' Nothing could be more contrary to the principles of democracy than that position."

Adamant as he is that the evidence be tested, Blake said he would not be surprised if the results determine that the state had the right man all along. Another possibility, he said, is that the evidence has deteriorated to the point that tests would be inconclusive.

Earlier this week, Warner was asked about the matter during a talk show on WVTF-FM public radio. He promised the caller, Jack Payden-Travers of Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, that he will make a decision shortly.

"I would hope that justice would override the political concerns," Payden-Travers said after the show. "Unfortunately, being a realist, I know that political concerns often outweigh issues of justice."