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A jailhouse snitch named Roger Matney testified that while sharing a cell with Coleman before the trial, Coleman stated that he and another man raped Wanda, then the other man killed her. After offering up this story a year later at Coleman's trial, Matney was released from serving the remainder of four concurrent four-year prison sentences. Later Matney's mother-in-law claimed that he had admitted to making it all up, which he in turn denied.
An experienced defense team might have poked holes through the prosecution's case. But Coleman was a poor coal miner, with no spare cash to hire an attorney. His court-appointed lawyer, Terry Jordan, was just two years out of law school and had tried only one murder case. In Bartleby fashion, Jordan told the judge at the outset that he would "prefer not to" handle the case. It is interesting to note that according to Matney's arrest records, a Terry Jordan represented Matney in an assault and battery hearing scheduled for May 29, 1981; that is the same day that Matney gave his statement about Coleman's alleged jailhouse "confession" to the police.
Coleman asserts in his pending appeal that his initial legal representation was woefully inadequate. His court papers contend that the ensuing $ investigation of the facts was so bare bones that neither Jordan nor his other assigned attorney, Steve Arey, ever retraced Coleman's steps the night of the murder to clock his movements or search for witnesses. They never went inside the McCoy or Coleman houses. They never measured the creek to see if the water marks on Coleman's pants matched the water level of the creek.
Much of the evidence that might have vindicated Coleman has still never been heard in court. Because rumors about the murder were plentiful and pretty much everyone knew about Coleman's prior conviction, his lawyers petitioned for a change of venue. But Arey did not show up for the motion, leaving the argument to Jordan, whom Coleman charges with inadequate preparation. The case remained in Grundy, the seat of Buchanan County. After the trial, one of Coleman's appeals would be based on a report that a juror had allegedly announced that he hoped to be seated on the jury so he could "burn the s.o.b." The juror has denied making the statement.
Most shocking is the evidence the defense never presented. A few days after the murder, Keester Shortridge, who lived near the McCoys, found in the back of his truck a plastic bag stuffed with blood-soaked lilac sheets, two Van Heusen cowboy shirts and a pair of scissors. Instead of calling the police, Shortridge buried the bag in a landfill. A few weeks ago, Jordan signed an affidavit stating that he too knew about Shortridge's discovery of the sheets prior to the trial. "I considered the information useless," he stated. Under the Supreme Court's current interpretation of habeas corpus law, that admission ensures that any higher court will find the information useless as well. But it might have been useful to Roger Coleman.
Then there is the matter of Coleman's clothes. Prosecutors have never doubted that the bag of clothing Coleman surrendered to the police the day after the murder contained the same items he wore the night Wanda was slain. Indeed, during the trial the prosecutors made much of three droplets of blood that matched Wanda's type O blood on the left leg of the blue jeans.