Excerpted from "Mean Justice" by Edward Humes, Pocket Star Books, 1999.

Coal miner Roger Keith Coleman is executed in Virginia despite substantial new evidence of innocence in the murder of a young woman. His appeal failed not because the new evidence was lacking, but because his lawyers were three days late in filing it. Coleman produced uncontroverted evidence that police and prosecutors had favorable information and witnesses while concealing the existence of another suspect. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene, however, calling Virginia's decision to deny Coleman a new hearing because of the three-day filing delay a matter of "states' rights."