RICHMOND -- Gov. Tim Kaine said Wednesday that he will meet with families of the Virginia Tech shooting victims to hear their concerns about the work of his handpicked review panel and other matters related to the April 16 tragedy.

The governor decided to host the meeting after some relatives of the victims publicly criticized the exclusion of family members from an eight-member panel that Kaine appointed to investigate the shootings. Thirty-three people, including gunman Seung-Hui Cho, died in the rampage on the Blacksburg campus.

"They have a lot of serious and legitimate concerns, they have a lot of powerful and understandable emotions, and they have a lot of questions," Kaine told reporters outside the governor's mansion Wednesday afternoon.

Relatives of 13 victims released a statement earlier this week expressing anger over "being ostracized from a government-chartered panel investigating a government-chartered university." They demanded to have some sort of representation on the panel.

Many relatives of the shooting victims attended Monday's panel meeting at George Mason University. Panel members and Larry Roberts, the governor's chief counsel, met privately with several family members following the meeting to discuss some of their concerns.

Kaine said he has been in touch with "three or four of the family members" since that meeting.

"It just became clear to me that a session ... where I could sit down and listen to the full range of concerns that they have would probably be helpful," Kaine said.

Kaine said he will schedule the meeting at a time that will allow as many families as possible to attend. A Kaine spokesman said the meeting would occur before the panel's fourth and final public session July 18. The governor expects the panel to issue a report in August.

Some family members have demanded to have a representative on the panel, but Kaine said, "I will say that's not a uniform desire, and a lot of the family members I've talked to have not expressed that as an issue."

The governor defended the make-up of the panel, which is chaired by retired Virginia State Police Superintendent Gerald Massengill. Kaine likened the panel to a jury that must be independent and objective.

"It's a tradition in juries that folks with a direct connection to the event are not on the jury," Kaine said. "Not because we have a disrespect for those people. They have an incredibly important perspective that we have to know. But when judgments are being rendered, they should be rendered by people who don't have a direct personal link. That's the way of gaining credibility for the recommendations."

Peter Read, whose daughter Mary died in the shootings, told the panel Monday that grieving relatives can lend valuable insight to the group's work.

"We bring a qualification to the table that we don't feel any of you can match, which is intimate knowledge of what Seung-Hui Cho took from us," Read said.

Kaine said he wants the families to have confidence in the panel's work. He said he has been in regular telephone contact with many of the families since early May and hopes meeting will help allay their concerns.

"Maybe being in a room and doing it face to face, that will maybe give me some additional insights and maybe give me the opportunity to answer a few questions and explain some things in ways that would be better than doing it by phone," he said.