Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, September 26, 1995 TAG: 9509260085
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOE JACKSON AND JUNE ARNEY LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The hours before U.S. District Judge Jackson Kiser's ruling produced a flurry of dueling affidavits centering on the credibility of the state's key witness, Randy G. Bowman.
Recent affidavits allege that Bowman is the real killer of 18-year-old Kenneth Arnder in July 1978. Stockton, convicted of killing Arnder in Patrick County for $1,500, had been scheduled to die by lethal injection Wednesday for the murder.
No date for the hearing has been set. Don Harrison, spokesman for Attorney General Jim Gilmore, said Kiser's ruling is being appealed to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Last week, Stockton's attorneys filed affidavits by three witnesses saying Bowman told them he was Arnder's killer. Sworn statements by Patricia Ann McHone, Bowman's former wife, and Kathy Carreon, his former friend, said he told them on separate occasions that he had killed Arnder. An affidavit by Timothy Crabtree, Bowman's son, said Bowman had admitted killing a boy and disposing of the body with the help of friends.
Prosecutors called the affidavits uncorroborated.
Then, on Monday, McHone's sister said in a statement filed in federal court: ``My sister told me that Randy Bowman once told her after returning home one night that he had killed someone.''
But later Monday, the Virginia attorney general's office filed a statement by Surry County, N.C., Sheriff Connie R. Watson suggesting Bowman could not have killed Arnder because he was in jail at the time.
Watson's affidavit said Bowman was ``in continuous custody'' from July 3, 1978, until Aug. 16, 1978, serving a six-month sentence for reckless driving, eluding arrest and speeding.
Arnder was killed sometime between July 20, when his mother last saw him alive, and July 25, when his body was discovered near Mt. Airy, N.C., home of Stockton, Bowman and Arnder.
Bowman testified in 1983 that he heard Stockton accept $1,500 from another man to kill Arnder. In April, Bowman told a reporter for the Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk that he had never heard the deal. But in May, in a sworn affidavit, he denied recanting.
Sheriff Watson's affidavit ``should put to rest the issue of whether Randy Bowman committed this murder,'' Harrison said Monday. ``The attorney general's office, to the best of our ability, always takes a close look at any allegations concerning a person's guilt or innocence.''
Countered Anthony King, one of Stockton's lawyers: ``Who cares what some sheriff said? They didn't produce the records ... If the sheriff wants to come to the hearing and testify under oath, the more the merrier.''
Why did McHone take so long to come forward? Carreon and Crabtree said they learned of Bowman's role in late 1994 or early this year. But McHone said she was told in 1978, soon after Arnder's murder.
It is an issue that will be argued in the new hearing. Arnder's mother said she thinks the affidavits are a trick by defense lawyers.
In a phone interview Monday, McHone recalled the night Bowman said he was the killer. ``I was in the bed when he came in,'' she said. ``He had been drinking ... He told me he would kill me if I ever repeated what he said. Several times he said that if I told anybody, I would die.''
On Friday, Bowman declined comment, saying, ``There ain't no point in it.''
There is a familiar pattern in witnesses providing new information at the last minute in capital murder cases, said Jim McCloskey, founder of the Princeton, N.J.-based Centurion Ministries Inc. He has investigated several cases of inmates, claiming innocence, who faced execution.
``People ... hope and pray that events will take their natural course and they won't have to come forward,'' he said. ``They're afraid.''
But as an execution date nears, the pressure increases. ``That's when their conscience starts to plague them,'' he said.
McCloskey cited the Clarence Brandley case, in which a key prosecution witness changed his story seven years after the trial. That witness kept quiet out of fear of the real killers and the Texas Ranger who built the case, but he started talking to McCloskey nine days before Brandley was to die. Soon, other witnesses came forward. Brandley's execution was stayed within four days of his death. He was freed in January 1990.
Two other men were not so lucky, McCloskey said. Roger Coleman was executed in Virginia in May 1992, and Jimmy Wingo in Louisiana in June 1987, despite last-minute evidence for both men.
New evidence comes out for Stockton in much the same way as for Brandley, Coleman and Wingo, McCloskey said.
``Here's Stockton ready to get executed - days away,'' he said. ``[McHone] comes forward. She's an abused woman. She's afraid of her ex-husband. She's afraid of maybe being murdered. She's stayed quiet out of fear for her own safety. Now the clock is ticking. We're minutes away from when the bell tolls.''
``I've seen two innocent people go to their deaths in the name of expediency,'' he said. ``I hope, based on this, people will wake up and listen.''
by CNB