cover image Dead Run: The Untold Story of Dennis Stockton and America's Only Mass Escape from Death Row

Dead Run: The Untold Story of Dennis Stockton and America's Only Mass Escape from Death Row

J. Jackson, Joe Jackson, W. M. Burke. Crown Publishers, $25 (336pp) ISBN 978-0-8129-3206-5

A career criminal who was in and out of prison from the time he was caught passing bad checks as a teenager, Dennis Stockton was no angel. But, as journalists Jackson and Burke convincingly demonstrate, he was wrongly executed for a murder he didn't commit. In this chilling account drawing on interviews and Stockton's own death row writings (some of which they published in their newspaper, the Virginia Pilot), the authors paint a picture of a prison system as inept as it is corrupt and cruel, and of justice severely perverted. The man who allegedly hired Stockton to kill a North Carolina teenager in 1978 was never prosecuted. And the sole witness, himself a convict, who testified against Stockton was later heard bragging of committing the murder himself. But Virginia, where Stockton was tried, prohibits introducing new evidence more than 21 days after conviction. Stockton also brought trouble on himself with his prison diary and his decision to publish parts of it in the Virginia Pilot, the state's largest newspaper. In the diary, he revealed inside information about the escape of six fellow death row inmates on Memorial Day weekend 1984. Stockton related that underpaid and often corrupt guards were either incompetent or actively assisted the prisoners (all of whom were captured within three weeks). The revelations enraged prison guards and inmates, putting Stockton's life in danger, and embarrassed the state, in all likelihood ending any hopes Stockton might have had for clemency. Burke and Jackson offer a gripping inside look at the life usually hidden behind prison walls and a frightening indictment of the criminal justice system. 25 illus. (Nov.)