THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 6, 1995 TAG: 9508060007
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A2 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: EDITOR'S NOTEBOOK
SOURCE: BILL BURKE, Editor, Criminal Justice Team
LENGTH: Medium: 77 lines
Last Monday, in rural Patrick County, Circuit Judge Charles Stone signed Dennis W. Stockton's death warrant - a court order setting his execution for 9 p.m. on Sept. 27.
On that day, four counties to the east, the man affected by the signing sat in a stuffy prison cell, putting words on paper himself.
The words he was writing will appear on the pages of this newspaper.
Stockton is the dean of Virginia's death row and, at 54, one of the oldest death-row inmates in America. As Stockton marks the days on the calendar, readers of The Virginian-Pilot will know what he sees, what he hears, what he thinks. He is writing an account of what are likely to be the final weeks of his life.
Beginning on today's front page, the newspaper will follow the story to its conclusion, whatever it may be: an execution, a pardon, clemency.
Dennis Stockton has unusual credentials as a writer. He has kept a diary of life on death row since June 20, 1983, five days after arriving at Mecklenburg. This newspaper published lengthy excerpts from that diary in 1984 in which Stockton described, in clear, reportorial style, the only mass escape from death row in U.S. history.
Stockton has written several as-yet unpublished books and was the author of a monthly prison newsletter that was sometimes bitter and angry, sometimes quirky and whimsical.
Stockton himself suggested writing this account, which could be the final chapter of the diary he began 12 summers ago on Virginia's death row.
After discussion among editors and reporters, we agreed to publish it because it is a compelling account of public interest. We are paying Stockton as a writer, at a correspondent's rate of $100 per story. We also helped pay for the electronic typewriter he is using to write his stories.
Stockton, of Shelby, N.C., was convicted in 1983 of the 1978 murder-for-hire of Kenneth Wayne Arnder, 18, in Patrick County, near the North Carolina state line. It was a brutal killing: Arnder was shot in the head and his hands were hacked off at the wrists. A jury sentenced Stockton to death.
Next Sunday, we will publish a story about the effect of the crime on the victim's family. Staff writer Joe Jackson traveled to North Carolina to talk at length with Wilma Arnder, Kenneth's mother, who has waited 17 years to see the final resolution of this case.
Much has been written about Stockton's claims of innocence and about charges by him and his lawyers that his conviction and sentence were obtained under questionable circumstances.
The chief prosecution witness in the case in April recanted, in an interview with a Virginian-Pilot reporter, the story he had told at the trial: That he had heard Stockton accept a deal for a murder for hire. Without that testimony, prosecutors probably could not have obtained a death sentence.
The witness later, under oath, denied making the recantation.
And a federal judge, while noting that the witness had a credibility problem, pointed out that jurors were aware of this when they sentenced Stockton and gave him the death penalty anyway. The judge then upheld that sentence.
Aside from his opening statement, Stockton's journal is not about his guilt or innocence. It isn't about whether he received a fair trial. We haven't given him a forum to plea for clemency or mercy.
Instead, we have given him a place to tell the story of one person facing the ultimate punishment for a criminal act and how he copes with his mortality, knowing the day and the hour of his death. And knowing that he is powerless to stop it.
Bill Burke
Editor, Criminal Justice Team ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Bill Burke is editor of the Criminal Justice Team
KEYWORDS: DEATH ROW DIARY MURDER by CNB