Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, September 28, 1995 TAG: 9509280054
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOE JACKSON LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: JARRATT LENGTH: Medium
Both the U.S. Supreme Court and Gov. George Allen waited until the final two hours to decide they were unconvinced by last-minute witnesses who said Stockton was innocent.
In an eerie moment just minutes before Stockton died, the telephone in the death chamber rang twice. Stockton was strapped to a gurney, intravenous tubes in both arms.
But it was a wrong number. A prison official picked it up and said, ``No, this is the death house,'' and hung up.
Seven minutes later, Stockton, 55, the dean of Virginia's death row, died - 12 years after a jury convicted him of the 1978 killing and dismemberment of an 18-year-old in a murder-for-hire in Patrick County.
To the end, Stockton maintained his innocence.
In a final written statement, Stockton, who has written several unpublished books, let one of his fictional characters speak for him. The character said, ``Dennis is a victim of a crime in the worst kind of way. May God not hold the feelings of his enemies toward him against them.''
In the moments before his death, staring at the ceiling, Stockton recited from memory a passage from Isaiah: ``Thou will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee, because he trusteth in thee.'' He made no other comments.
The execution came after a flurry of unsuccessful last-minute appeals.
Just two hours before the execution, the Supreme Court unanimously denied Stockton's final appeal, without comment. That was at 6:55 p.m.
Fifty minutes later, at 7:45, the governor rejected Stockton's appeal for clemency. Allen could have converted Stockton's sentence to life in prison, or stayed the execution.
The governor had sent state police on Tuesday to interview a North Carolina sheriff and to examine jail records to verify that another man who some say committed the murder was in jail at the time of the killing.
In the hours before his death, Stockton was upbeat. At one point, over a final meal of grilled cheese sandwiches and french fries, Stockton became upset when a minister, Ronald O. Smith of Florida, got teary-eyed.
``The last hours of my life I'm not going to do this. I want you to be strong,'' Stockton told Smith, then prayed for God to give the minister strength. ``Thank you, God,'' Stockton said, ``that you've already given me strength.''
Stockton appeared haggard, old and thin in his orange prison jumpsuit and horn-rimmed glasses.
He was the 27th inmate executed in Virginia - and the 300th in America - since 1976, when the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty. Only Texas and Florida have executed more inmates than Virginia.
The execution was a long time coming.
Stockton was convicted in 1983 of murdering Kenneth Arnder in 1978, hacking off both of Arnder's hands, then moving the body to North Carolina.
No physical evidence linked Stockton to Arnder, but a witness, Randy Bowman, testified that he heard Stockton agree to kill Arnder for $1,500 over a soured drug deal. A second man was arrested, but never tried.
Because Bowman said it was a contract killing, prosecutors were allowed to seek the death penalty.
In April this year, Bowman told a newspaper reporter that he never heard Stockton accept the offer to kill Arnder. Two weeks later, after a visit by investigators, Bowman said he had not recanted to the reporter.
Last week, three new witnesses came forward to say it was Bowman, not Stockton, who had killed Arnder.
Prosecutors called the new statements uncorroborated.
On Monday, the state attorney general's office filed its own statement to discredit the theory that Bowman was the murderer. The statement by Sheriff Connie R. Watson of Surry County, N.C., suggested that Bowman could not have been the killer because he was in jail at the time.
On Monday, a federal judge in Roanoke issued a 60-day stay of execution, agreeing to conduct a hearing on the new evidence.
But on Tuesday, a federal appeals court in Richmond overturned that stay, saying the new evidence was too little, too late. Stockton's last-minute claims of innocence were blocked by a state law barring new evidence beyond 21 days of conviction.
The appeals court wrote that the new witnesses were ``never tested by cross-examination,'' but that Watson's affidavit was persuasive. The court wrote: ``Last minute stays on the part of the federal court represent an interference with the orderly process of justice which should be avoided in all but the most extraordinary cases.''
June Arney, Bill Burke, Marc Davis, Laura Lafay, Angelita Plemmer and Lynn Waltz, all of Landmark News Service, and The Associated Press contributed to this story.
by CNB