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Title: Dead Run: The Shocking Story of Dennis Stockton and Life on Death Row in America by Joe Jackson, William F., Jr. Burke, William Styron ISBN: 0-8027-7599-3 Publisher: Walker & Co Pub. Date: October, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (16 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: BEST CRIME JOURNALISM IN YEARS
Comment: DEAD RUN is the best work of crime journalism I've read since THE EXECUTIONER'S SONG. It transcends the increasingly shabby true-crime genre. It is a superb study of life on Death Row. It is the latest proof that the land of the free continues to execute the innocent. It is a jailbreak story that rivals PAPILLON. It is crime history at its most elevated, and yet there's not a stodgy line. Social context is never forgotten, but the narrative line chugs ahead like a runaway locomotive. I will re-read this book many times and recommend it to all who enjoy a great yarn and responsible journalism.
Rating: 3
Summary: Important subject, skeptical of authors
Comment: 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. Frankly, Stockton is a better, more forceful, less breathless writer than Jackson and Burke, but the authors have seen fit to rewrite and summarize his journals, and to claim authorship. They are good reporters, but they were given a gift when Stockton decided to hand over his fantastic, intelligent journals.
I'm deeply troubled by the fact that Stockton is _not_ given co-authorship credit on the jacket or on the title page, even though the best passages of the book are his writing, and most of the "inside" accounts of death row life are lifted and rewritten from his journals. It's disturbing that the true author of this story has been made into a mere exhibit by these authors. It's troubling to me that the book, based largely on the work of a dead man (and featuring big chunks of that dead man's writing) is copyrighted by these two authors, and that they're probably enjoying a full cut of the royalties. (I'd be happy to find out that they were sharing royalties with Stockton's family, but I'm not holding my breath.)
This is an important, essential book in the literature of death row. I just wish Dennis Stockton had gotten more credit for being the man he had longed to be -- a writer.
Rating: 5
Summary: Important
Comment: 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?
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Title: Murder in Paradise : A Christmas in Hawaii Turns to Tragedy by Chris Loos, Rick Castberg ISBN: 0060093463 Publisher: Avon Pub. Date: 29 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $7.50 |
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Title: Slave Master by Sue Wiltz, Maurice Godwin ISBN: 0786014083 Publisher: Pinnacle Books Pub. Date: February, 2004 List Price(USD): $6.50 |
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Title: Triangle by Irene Pence ISBN: 0786014903 Publisher: Pinnacle Books Pub. Date: July, 2001 List Price(USD): $6.50 |
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Title: May God Have Mercy : A True Story of Crime and Punishment by John C. Tucker ISBN: 0385332947 Publisher: Delta Pub. Date: 10 August, 1998 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Murder So Cold: A Father's Deadly Rage, a Daughter's Tragic Legacy by Patricia Springer ISBN: 0786015829 Publisher: Pinnacle Books Pub. Date: January, 2004 List Price(USD): $6.50 |
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