Ok I get it now.
You can do this with client side javascript and dojo
in the client onclick event of the view panel link add the following csjs. In the following example it assumes the view panels "indexVar" property is set to "rownum"
//resets all table rows to white
dojo.query("tr").style("backgroundColor","white");
//gets the selected row number
var rownum = "#{javascript:return rownum;}";
//sets the node value of the selected row
var nodeval = "view:_id1:viewPanel1:"+rownum.substring(0,rownum.indexOf("."))+":viewColumn1:_internalColumnLink"
//sets the background color of the selected node to red
dojo.query(dojo.byId(nodeval)).parent().parent().style("backgroundColor","red");