THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, September 28, 1995 TAG: 9509280368
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A7 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: UNDER SENTENCE OF DEATH
JOURNAL OF A CONDEMNED MAN
This is one in a series of dispatches from inmate Dennis Stockton,
awaiting execution on Virginia's death row.
LENGTH: Medium: 82 lines
Editor's note: This is the last entry in Dennis Stockton's death-row diary. It was written a few hours before his execution.
Wednesday, Sept. 27 - I got the best night's sleep since I arrived here at the death house. A deep, dreamless sleep. I had asked God for a good night's rest and he obliged.
Barring a miracle, it will be my last night's sleep in this life. Today is my execution day.
I started keeping a diary on June 20, 1983, shortly after I arrived on death row. This, I suppose, will be the final entry.
Right after breakfast today, the officer in charge came in with all my property for me to go through, item by item. There was my typewriter, my manuscripts, six cartons of cigarettes, three or four bottles of Prell shampoo and so on.
We packed it all into boxes to be given and sent to different people - one for my friend Steve Roach on death row, one for Steve's father, one for my brother Doug.
I guess you'd call this tying up the loose ends of one's lifetime.
I talked to a TV reporter from Roanoke today. She said she had spoken with Gov. Allen's office and the governor said he wouldn't allow an innocent man to die. We'll see.
If I could have one minute with the governor, this is what I would tell him:
``Governor, go ahead and kill me. I'm 55 years old and my life is over. Let Steve Roach go free. He's a young man who has a boy at home, a boy who needs a father to learn him how to fish and play ball.''
I spoke to Steve on the phone today. When I got ready to hang up, I could hear him crying. I told him, ``Damn it, don't you go and cry on me.''
They came around today and told me about my last meal. There are no more special ``last meals'' anymore. That all ended, along with typewriters in the death house, with Willie Lloyd Turner.
I got to circle something from the regular menu. I asked for six melted cheese sandwiches, an extremely large order of french fries and six Coca-Cola Classics. That's in case my lawyers and my minister join me.
I've been following my beloved New York Yankees and it looks like they're fading in the stretch run. They could sure use me in the bullpen - a ninth-inning closer. Of course, I won't know how it all comes out.
Since I won't be around to do it anymore, Steve Roach is keeping up the tradition of putting out the prison newsletter I started, ``Passin' Thoughts.'' In the first issue, I noticed he had misspelled the word Thursday and I was going to correct him but I didn't. He's going to have to learn the same way I did.
What would I do if I were suddenly a free man?
I'd get in a car with my friend Ron Smith and we'd drive to the airport, then fly to his home in Florida. Ron has a job for me down there working with his son in the construction business.
I'd probably go swimming in Ron's pool, then walk over to the trailer he has for me to live in. Then I'd put some paper in the typewriter and start on a new manuscript.
I'm a man of few needs. Just a typewriter with a new ribbon and some Bugler tobacco to roll my own cigarettes.
Well, we got the word late this evening that first the Supreme Court and then Governor Allen ruled against me.
It won't be long now before they come to get me. That's when Steve Roach and some of my other friends on Death Row at Mecklenburg crank up their cassette players.
They'll be playing Lynyrd Skynyrd's ``Free Bird'' wide open at 9 p.m. The live 11 1/2-minute version.
When the last strains of that song fade away, one way or another I'll be free . . . free as a bird. ILLUSTRATION: THE EXECUTION OF DENNIS STOCKTON
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KEYWORDS: CAPITAL PUNISHMENT LETHAL INJECTION by CNB