THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 6, 1995 TAG: 9508060123
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: UNDER SENTENCE OF DEATH
JOURNAL OF A CONDEMNED MAN
LENGTH: Long : 180 lines
Since 1976, when the U.S. Supreme Court gave states the authority to reinstate the death penalty, Texas, Florida and Virginia have led the nation in the number of people executed.
If Dennis W. Stockton is put to death as scheduled on Sept. 27, he will be the 27th inmate to die in Virginia in the past two decades. The other 26 counted down the weeks and hours to their executions in relative privacy. Stockton, convicted of murder for hire and sentenced to death in 1983, decided to share with the public the story of his final weeks.
So beginning today, in diary entries written in his cell, he will tell what it is like to turn the pages on the calendar and watch the hands on the clock, knowing the day, the hour and the method of his death. DENNIS STOCKTON'S DIARY
JULY 26, 1995: My name is Dennis Stockton, inmate No. 134466. I'm on death row at Mecklenburg Correctional Center, sentenced to die for a crime I'm not guilty of: murder for hire. I've been saying this since long before it became fashionable to do so. I want to be free!
It's 9 p.m. now, the day almost over. And what a day it's been. My attorneys, Steve Rosenfield and Tony King, visited today with the news I've been expecting to hear: The state has set a date to kill me, Sept. 27. A judge will sign the order on Monday. The date the state has set is one day after the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear my final appeal. Not a lot of legal leeway there.
No one from the prison or Department of Corrections has let me know that I have a killing date, but I didn't really expect they would. From what I have been told, it will happen like this: The warden will come to the pod and all the other death-row inmates will be sent to their cells. Then the warden will read me the death warrant, and guards will take me out to a van for the ride to the death house in Greensville County. I'm not sure when this will happen, or even if it will happen in exactly this manner.
While I wait for whatever the future holds for me, I spend my days in a cell (22) in a prison (A-Pod, No. 1 Building) within a prison (Mecklenburg). Mecklenburg is where I began my life on death row on June 15, 1983. I was removed to a prison in Richmond on Jan. 31, 1985 and returned here on April 26 of this year. In between, I spent most of my time in M Building at Powhatan Correctional Center, which houses some of the meanest, scaredest and craziest prisoners in Virginia.
I am 54 years old. I've been locked up since July 29, 1980, when I was arrested in my native North Carolina on unrelated charges. I've been locked up for 15 years and one week. I was charged with capital murder in summer of 1982. In March of 1983, a jury, after a 2 1/2-day trial, sentenced me to death. From July 1987 through May 1990, during a period my death sentence was temporarily overturned, I was in the general prison population, working in the prison print shop. After a resentencing hearing in 1990 - a hearing demanded by me rather than by the state - I was again sentenced to death and taken straight from the courtroom to M Building. I was formally resentenced on July 30, 1990, the day after Dale Earnhardt won the Talladega 500 and the day before Nolan Ryan won his 300th major-league baseball game.
Most of my life is spent in this cell. I have a steel bed welded to one wall. The bed has five rows of holes, each about the size of a silver dollar. There are 18 holes to a row, 90 in all. My mattress is 1 1/2 inches thick. It is so thin that when I lie down, I can feel the holes underneath. I have a window covered by a heavy metal screen. A crank allows me to open and close the window. There are nine louvers in the window, which only open partway. If I take four steps from the back of my cell, I will bump into the cell door. I can take two steps from my bed to the wall opposite it. I have a sink with hot and cold water, a commode, a table with a swing-out attached seat, two shelves for storing personal and legal property and a plastic foot locker.
The door to the cell is solid metal and has a tray slot for meals and a 3-inch by 36-inch window for guards making rounds at night to shine a flashlight through and wake me up, should I happen to be asleep. There is a light in the ceiling at the rear of my cell. I have tied an old shoestring to the switch so I can turn the light on and off without having to climb on my bed. The floor is painted gray, the rest of the cell nicotine white. We are no longer permitted to paint our cells.
I have several pictures on my walls. If you look in my door the only one you can see is a large, full-color picture of Dale Earnhardt standing at the back of the 1987 Chevy Monte Carlo he won 11 races in that year. I have many more pictures Dale has autographed and sent me over the years. My cell is also decorated with a Gallery centerfold, a calendar, a mountain waterfall scene and a copy of the Ten Commandments. Over my sink is a mirror, which I had to buy.
All in all, conditions here are more livable than they were in M Building at Powhatan. When I was there, I played music on my radio/tape player constantly to overcome the never-ceasing uproar around me. The state is experiencing budget difficulties that have forced the closing of some mental health facilities. Many people formerly confined to ``nut houses'' were in the cells around me at Powhatan. Being around these people even unhinged some of the guards, and they only had to be here eight hours a day. A little ditty I composed, called ``The Funny Farm,'' will give you an idea of what I mean.
I sit here and listen as neighbors holler, bang and scream. They sound just like children waking from a bad dream.
Most sound incoherent as they rave and rant, and it's doubtful if any know just where they're at.
At all hours, day and night, their raving can be heard. Many times I've wished I could fly away like a bird.
Kill, ----, Suck and Burn, is all that I hear. From neighbors afar and others quite near.
Where do they find folks like they lock up these days? Could it be that all of society is crazed?
If ever I want to find peace of mind, only one way to do so can I seem to find.
When I hear, ``Let's riot and burn down the building,'' I close the hall door and tune in ``All My Children.''
My day begins with a period I refer to as my ``quiet time,'' which is when I pray and read from my Bible. The version I like reading best is the Today's English Version. I have a King James and New International version as well. I was baptized on March 1, 1991 while in M Building.
I eat my meals at tables out in the pod area. I have to walk up seven steps to reach that area. There are three metal tables to sit at, and each table seats four. They are bolted to the floor. All 11 inmates on the pod often show up for meals. I usually eat with Steve Roach of Greene County. As for the food: It's the kind where you don't ask for seconds. The meal I look forward to most is on Saturday, when we get two toasted cheese sandwiches and pinto beans.
There's a color TV in the pod area that's on most of the time. A shower is located at each end of the tier. We get an hour out at breakfast, an hour at dinner (the midday meal) and two hours at supper. Weather permitting, we are allowed two hours of outdoor recreation on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The rest of the time is spent in our cells.
Hot weather is the worst time on death row. The air is moist and hard to breathe. That's when that I am pestered by flies. Can you imagine trying to type with flies buzzing around you and your work? I used to swat them with an old rolled-up newspaper, but then I got hold of a little money and was able to purchase a 39-cent genuine plastic fly swatter from the canteen.
Once, in M Building, a fly that had been extremely bothersome, one that always hid when I stopped what I was doing and picked up my swatter, came to rest on my typewriter on the ``G'' key. I was in the process of spelling out the word ``guess.'' That's where he met his end. Trust me on this; it happened.
When the temperature and humidity were way up, I spent a lot of time watching the paint on the walls of my cell at M Building un-dry. Yes, un-dry. Years ago, while listening to a NASCAR race one Sunday afternoon, I heard Darrell Waltrip make a statement that went something like, ``The race was about as exciting as watching paint dry.'' I understand what he meant. I felt the same way watching paint un-dry.
In 1990, I had to sit in an upstairs holding cell for several hours while waiting for a new coat of pale green paint to dry in my new cell. Later, during the humid days of July and August, I awakened one morning to find that many pictures I had hung on the walls had fallen because the paint was so moist.
Running a fingernail across the paint, I found I could pull the paint off the walls. Not all at once, but in surprisingly large sections. Underneath the green paint, I discovered a layer of light blue. Unpainting the cell further, I discovered a Playboy centerfold between the green and light blue layers. Beneath the light blue layer I found a Band-Aid and, of all things, a page from a Bible. When they painted my cell, no one bothered to take down the wall decorations first. They just painted over them!
Underneath the light blue paint was a coat of dark blue. In the following weeks, I ``unpainted'' to the point that most of the green was gone. It only remained in places I couldn't reach. I found five different colors en route to the bare concrete. Whoever painted the cell got about as much paint on the floor as on the walls and ceiling.
The page from the Bible, covered by two layers of paint, was from the book of Isaiah. I memorized one of the verses, Isaiah 26:3: ``He will keep thee in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.'' MEMO: NEXT SUNDAY: Stockton reflects on the choice he must make: execution by
lethal injection or electrocution.
ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
BILL TIERNAN
Photo
BILL TIERNAN/Staff
John Halford, left, friend and adviser of death row inmate Dennis W.
Stockton, reads from Stockton's writings during a visit in February
to the Powhatan Correctional Center.
Map
KEN WRIGHT/Staff
KEYWORDS: DEATH ROW DIARY MURDER by CNB