Dead Run: The Shocking Story of Dennis Stockton and Life on Death Row in America [Paperback]

 

 

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This review is for the hardcover edition measuring 9 1/2 X 6 1/4 having 299 pages and 8 photo pages.
This book can be roughly divided into 2 equally sized portions.
The first half of the book concerns itself with a campaign against capitol punishment by the authors combined with a HUGE amount of speculative what if's concerning Stockton's conviction and execution.
As always, wise after the fact they yank out his diary as 'TESTIMONY'...while at the same time quoting Stockton himself as writing that the diary was created AS AN OPPORTUNITY to make money and further his appeal cause. If you think those are conditions under which an unbiased and honest document was written then so be it.
We are assaulted regularly by the 'questionable' evidence against him and the fact that his main accuser recanted his testimony MANY years later. So....essentially he is GUARANTEED to be a liar....it's just a question of which lie you prefer to believe. As an interesting sidelight he later RECANTED the recantation and reasserted his original testimony....naturally the authors barely mention this.
The second half of the book is what happened AFTER the escapees were recaptured and the punishments meted out to them.
A SCANT 14 pages is devoted to the actual escape and recapture and the much-touted Stockton had NOTHING AT ALL to do with the escape plans which in fact were the creation of one of the escapers.
Stockton in fact believed SO LITTLE in the escape possibility that he DIDN'T EVEN ATTEMPT to escape with the others.
This book smells like the potboiler it is, capitalizing on the then notoriety of Stockton as his days became numbered on death row.
Claiming he would NOT make any other appeals against the death penalty he nonetheless didn't remain true to this claim either and appealed right to the bitter end.
Despite the author's claims of false testimony Stockton had in fact...BY HIS OWN ADMISSION accepted money for a contract killing a few years before and was not convicted because he claimed not to have found the intended victim.
This is a poorly written sensationalist piece of trash created almost certainly for the single purpose of lining the author's pockets and allowing them a chance to hop on their death penalty is bad hobbyhorse.
Save your money and take your wife out for a meal...this trash is nearly worthless as a true crime/escape story

This tells the story of an innocent man killed by the state of Virginia for political reasons, an event made easy and in all probability common by a law banning the reopening of a case to hear new evidence later than 21 days after a conviction. This applies even to evidence illegally suppressed during the original trial.
The book is extremely well-written, and much of it is exciting and suspenseful, particularly that dealing with the escape. Stockton was in on planning an escape from death row, but did not take part in it. New evidence of his innocence had just emerged, and Stockton apparently had enough faith left in the justice system to believe that he stood a better chance of freedom by not escaping. He may also have been driven by a desire to declare his innocence. He later refused a deal from the state of life imprisonment in exchange for ceasing to appeal his conviction. He also published diary entries in a newspaper which he knew would win him the ill-will of many with power over him.
This excellent book is marred slightly by the introduction's instructing us that "...there is no need to pity most criminals." Such a comment transfers its author's inability to pity to the rest of us. I'd be curious to know how many readers of this book feel no pity for the escaped murderer who arrives at the border of Canada, grows scared, telephones his mother, and - on her advice - turns himself in to be killed.
More importantly, the comment about pity leaves the debates over criminal justice within the framework of a battle between vengeance and pity - a framework in which the reduction of harm done by and to both criminals and the falsely accused can have no place.
The vengeance-versus-pity idea shoves aside the question of innocence-versus-guilt, and even where guilt is evident it shoves aside questions of societal healing, restitution to victims, rehabilitation of offenders, deterrence, and costs to tax-payers.
Everyone knows that crime is most easily and cost-effectively reduced by fighting poverty. It is unlikely that America's recent draconian measures will reduce crime in the long run. Stockton chose to trust the system rather than attempt an escape, but he was relieved to be killed when the only alternative was the hell-hole known as a correctional institution, a place full of flying feces, rape, murder, and abuse of every sort.
Lately, Virginia has been doing to juveniles what it has long done to adults convicted of crimes. The director of the dept. of juvenile justice [pun possibly intended] has resigned effective Dec. 1, 1999, following the death of a retarded youth in custody, the initiation of a self-defense program allowing guards to hit and kick kids, a girl being handcuffed on her way to a hospital to give birth, and poor conditions at the state's largest detention center so egregious that the agency's board decertified the place last week citing overcrowding and sexual misconduct.
Concern for convicts (innocent or not) is not in conflict with crime reduction. It is in
conflict with state violence, with the anger promoted by politicians even in the names of victims who publicly disown it. As long as advocates of vengeance are permitted
to masquerade as advocates of crime reduction, justice will be a sham.
This book is so well done that to find anything significant to complain about, I had to turn to the introduction, which the authors didn't write. The authors are an editor and an ex-reporter for the Virginian-Pilot, a Norfolk newspaper. Much of what they write is taken from Stockton's diary, transposed into the third person, fact-checked, and supplemented. The only thing I could fault these talented writers for is the occasional misplaced journalistic balance. The preface mentions "ultimate fairness - or lack thereof," as if the whole point of the book were not to describe unfairness. On page 19, the authors accept the term "monsters" as a useful one, without really defining what it should mean. On page 234 of a book describing the Dantean conditions of a prison, they write of a victim's mother's dealing with the years before an innocent man was executed for her son's murder: "It was like she was in prison too." Maybe she had said those words, but had she read this book? Did she have any idea what being in a prison is like? On page 251 the authors say that Stockton was "witness to a struggle between justice and mercy." He wasn't. He was witness to a struggle between evil politics and vengeance on the one hand, and the demands of innocence on the other. Justice cannot be opposed to mercy because justice should be merciful. Justice is, after all, an attempt - where all else has failed or not been tried - to reduce harm.
This book is not just an exciting page-turner. It also provides a great deal of useful information, including some shocking statistics. For example: "An October 1993 report by the U.S. House Judiciary Committee said that forty-eight innocent men had been freed from Death Rows across the nation since 1972, That came to a nearly one-in-six ratio of freed to executed prisoners. Of the forty-eight men, 52 percent 'were convicted on the basis of perjured testimony or because the prosecutor improperly withheld exculpatory evidence.'" Is this surprising in a country with the bizarre practice of ELECTING prosecutors to office - and voting them out if they leave a crime unpunished?

This book presents itself as a story of a prison escape, and while it does include information about the Mecklenburg escape, that's not what the book really is.

The real intention of the book is to make an anti-death penalty pitch and to suggest that Dennis Stockton is innocent.

I don't have a problem with either of those positions (I am against the death penalty myself), but I do have a problem paying for a book that isn't what it claims to be.

Moreover, if they want to make a pitch for Stockton's innocence, they ought to be much more thorough and fair. Juries, judges and the governor of Virginia disagree with that view. Now it may be that they're wrong, but in order to make a fair judgment you need a complete presentation of the facts. What we get here instead is a lot of suggestions about possible exoneration but no serious analysis.

Still, it's an interesting story that I can't give a "1" rating to in good faith. It's an OK book. It's just not what it claims to be.

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4.0 out of 5 stars Real Life, Real Drama
"Dead Run" is the best prison drama I have ever read, made more gripping by the fact that it is ALL TRUE. Read more

Published on Mar 8 2002 by Richard Thomas

5.0 out of 5 stars My GOD!! What a MASTERPIECE!!
What I wanted to know, after reading this simple, eloquent, masterfully written prose blockbuster is WHERE DO I GO TO NOMINATE THESE GUYS FOR THE NOBEL PRIZE??? Read more

Published on May 28 2001 by K. Tontobreine

4.0 out of 5 stars Impossible to put down
I'm not a big reader but this work reads fast and is extremely absorbing. I remember the Briley escape while I was in college, so the new context I never had was fascinating.

Published on Jan 9 2001

4.0 out of 5 stars Smoking Gun?
I skipped school to watch the Stockton verdict passed down at the courthouse in Stuart, Virginia, back in 1983. Read more

Published on July 5 2000 by Joel Lindsey

4.0 out of 5 stars Smoking Gun?
I skipped school to watch the Stockton verdict passed down at the courthouse in Stuart, Virginia, back in 1983. Read more

Published on July 5 2000 by Joel Lindsey

3.0 out of 5 stars Important subject, skeptical of authors
A fascinating subject and book. My problem with it dates back to when I read excerpts of the original diaries of Dennis Stockton in the Virginian-Pilot, not long after the escape... Read more

Published on April 7 2000

3.0 out of 5 stars Humanizing death row inmates
This book is a lightweight but interesting read. It suffers from the authors' inability to decide whether to focus on Dennis Stockton or the great escape. Read more

Published on Mar 30 2000 by Julian P Killingley

2.0 out of 5 stars So-so; made criminals look like heros
Exciting yes, but who wants to read a book which portrays the bad guys (evil men) like heros? I hated each and every one of the men in this book but the authors seemed to... Read more

Published on Mar 8 2000 by Joey

5.0 out of 5 stars Absolutely riveting! Couldn't put it down!
This is probably the best true-life prison story I have ever read (and I've read a lot). The writing is excellent, very down-to-earth and easy to follow. Read more

Published on Feb 11 2000

5.0 out of 5 stars The Gruesome Details of a Popular Policy
What struck me most about Dead Run is how well it is reported. This is not a tract; it is an elaborate journalistic mosaic of the grim realities behind the loud cries for death... Read more

Published on Dec 7 1999 by kenneth briggs

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