When Belief Overwhelms Judgment

The Post has an excellent piece up now on the case of executed murderer/rapist Roger Coleman and the activists who believed in his innocence. Coleman was executed in 1992 for the killing of his sister-in-law, but not before a storm of controversy emerged surrounding his claims of innocence. Many journalists and activists bought into Coleman's assertions that he had been unjustly convicted, and his claims inspired a prominent and largely sympathetic 1997 book, May God Have Mercy (one of my profs. in undergrad made it required reading for his legal system classes). Even after his execution, a group of activists continued to assert his innocence, and last year they succeeded in getting then-Gov. Mark Warner to allow modern DNA testing on evidence from the victim's body. These activists viewed this as a tremendous victory, of course; all believed in Coleman's innocence, and at least some hoped that his exoneration would deal a major blow to the institution of the death penalty in general.

The problem was that Coleman was, in fact, guilty. Earlier this year, the test came back as a definitive match.

The Post article provides some excellent insights into the motives of Coleman's defenders. The most glaring question is why so many believed in his innocence even in the face of the powerful (pre-DNA) physicial evidence of his guilt presented at his 1981 trial and continued to believe when less-sophisticated DNA tests, conducted in the 1990's, implicated him in the crime. As one might suspect, none of those involved directly state that their opposition to the death penalty may have affected their judgment about Coleman's guilt, but one doesn't have to do much reading between the lines to come to that conclusion.

I don't intend this post as a comment on the merits of the death penalty (one way or another). But more generally taken I think the story provides a cautionary tale of what can happen when lawyerly judgment is subsumed by "quests for justice" insufficiently checked by reason or concern for fact.