THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, September 26, 1995 TAG: 9509260291
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JOE JACKSON AND JUNE ARNEY
LENGTH: Long : 147 lines
A federal judge issued a 60-day stay of execution for condemned inmate Dennis Stockton on Monday and agreed to conduct a hearing on new evidence that Stockton's lawyers said could prove his innocence.
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, alleged in recent affidavits to be the real killer of 18-year-old Kenneth Arnder in July 1978. Stockton had been scheduled to die Wednesday, by lethal injection, for Arnder's murder.
No date for the new hearing has been set. Don Harrison, spokesman for Attorney General James S. Gilmore III, 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 alleging Bowman had killed Arnder. Sworn statements by Patricia Ann McHone, Bowman's former wife, and Kathy Carreon, his former friend, said he had told them on separate occasions that he killed Arnder. An affidavit by Timothy Crabtree, Bowman's son, said Bowman 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.''
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 been the killer 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, speeding and eluding arrest.
Arnder was killed sometime between July 20 - when his mother last saw him alive - and July 25, when his body was discovered near the Mount 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 Virginian-Pilot reporter that he never had 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.''
Anthony King, one of Stockton's lawyers, said: ``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.''
Bowman's criminal history has always been at issue. Surry County records show that in the decade following Bowman's testimony, he was arrested for numerous property crimes, yet was in and out of jail with only minimal sentences and swift releases.
Records and a letter by Bowman show he refused to testify unless given favorable treatment, yet Bowman and authorities have denied that such a deal was made.
Then, on Monday, McHone raised questions about the state's investigation into Bowman's credibility.
After Bowman recanted his testimony, McHone was contacted by North Carolina state investigators. ``They wanted me to make statement, but I was so scared I don't really remember what I signed,'' she said. ``I more or less wrote what they wanted me to write.''
Why did it take so long for McHone to come forward? Carreon - Bowman's former friend - and Crabtree - Bowman's son - alleged they learned of Bowman's part 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 believes the affidavits were a trick by defense lawyers.
In a phone interview on 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.''
McHone's statements paint a picture of a battered wife who could not escape her husband of eight years. Two relatives - Josephine Snider and Mildred McHone - corroborated Pat McHone's allegations of abuse. ``She was scared to death of that man,'' said Mildred McHone.
``I was a prisoner,'' she said. ``My children were prisoners. He would eat and he wouldn't let us have any food. I was eight months pregnant (with Timothy) when he beat me so bad he put me in labor.
``One time I remember him drawing a gun on Timmy while he was still a baby. Timmy was crying. . . Randy was on the run from police. He made me put Timmy in the bathtub. . . and he wouldn't stop crying. Randy got a gun, he put the gun to Timmy's head. He told me if you don't shut this kid up I'm gonna shoot him right here. It was a miracle that Timmy stopped crying and went to sleep.
``He's always threatened to kill me if he finds me,'' McHone said. ``I am a dead person if he finds me.''
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 cites 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 Texas Ranger who built the case, and fear of the real killers, but 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.
Now 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.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photos
Kenneth Arnder was killed in 1978, when he was 18.[color]
Dennis Stockton was found guilty in 1983 of murdering Arnder.[color]
Randy Bowman has been named in affidavits as Arnder's killer.[b\w
photo]
Pat McHone, Bowman's ex-wife, said she heard him say he'd killed
Arnder.[b\w photo]
Wilma Arnder, Arnder's mother, believes the new affidavits are a
trick.[color photo]
Jim McCloskey says the pressure rises as an execution date
nears.[b\w photo]
KEYWORDS: MURDER APPEAL CAPITAL PUNISHMENT DEATH ROW DENNIS
STOCKTON STAY OF EXECUTION
by CNB