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Abolition wear and informative books are available from VADP. See the options below. If you'd prefer just to make a donation please click here.
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An Expendable Man
The Near Execution of Earl Washington Jr.
Virginia has executed over 100 people since 1982 and exonerated only one. This book tells the story of how Washington, after 17 years on death row and coming withing nine days of execution, was freed by the Commonwealth of Virginia for a crime he had not committed.
"Earl Washington's story reveals the dark side of a system that is
not known for admitting its mistakes. We have a lot to learn from this
case, which highlights many of the problems we see over and over again
in cases of wrongful conviction."
—Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chief sponsor of The Innocence Protection Act
"Margaret Edds' book on Earl Washington shows the heavy handedness with
which our society deals with those it deems expendable. It demonstrates
how the politics of the death penalty skews our moral compass and how a
small group of volunteers toiled for many years to set it straight for
one expendable man. Whatever your position on the death penalty, if you
want to know how it actually works, read this book."
—Sister Helen Prejean
Requested Donation $15
Dead Run
The Shocking Story of Dennis Stockton and Life On Death Row in America
The fascinating story of a man sitting on Virginia's death row for a
murder involving friendships, drugs, and the border towns of VA and NC.
Dennis Stockton, a pitcher scouted by the Yankees as a boy, found
himself convicted on testimony, later recanted, from a highly dubious
source and while on the row saw and recorded everything there was to
see. The only mass escape from a death row was orgainized around him
and documented by him in his journal recounted here. The sad,
psychotic, and sociopathic personalities of all his row mates are
described with great research and sobriety yet there is adventurous
quality to the narrative that keep the pages turning. A very compelling
and human story.
From the Inside Flap
Summers are always
stifling in southern Virginia, and they're even hotter on the
Mecklenburg Correctional Center's Death Row when Dennis Stockton
arrives there in July 1983. Charged with murder for hire, Stockton
insisted he was innocent, but his jury sentenced him to die. In prison,
he begins keeping a diary and it soon becomes his lifeline, nurturing
dreams of freedom and publication as an author.
Mecklenburg's
officials had always prided themselves on running a secure prison, but
that left them vulnerable to an ingenious escape conspiracy. Though
indispensable in the plotting, Stockton decides not to run, betting
instead on a new trial and exoneration. The escape of the "Mecklenburg
Six" is dazzlingly suspenseful, as they take hostages, don guards'
uniforms, and, staging a monumental bluff, make history with America's
first mass escape from Death Row. Mean-while, Stockton notes it all in
his journal.
After the escape, a Norfolk newspaper editor,
William F. Burke, Jr., writes to the remaining inmates, seeking
information on the unprecedented breakout. Stockton's diary becomes the
most revealing account, and when excerpts are published, a scandalous
portrait of Death Row emerges: bribed guards, marijuana plants,
homebrew alcohol, weapon stashes, unlocked cell doors, and jailhouse
sex. Overnight, Stockton becomes the most hated man in Virginia's
prisons for his exposé. During the next eleven years, he survives plots
against his life and endures subhuman conditions.
Throughout
his ordeal he struggles to find his voice as a writer, while battling
to gain a new trial and escape the "monster factory," his name for
Death Row. As Stockton's scheduled execution nears, the case against
him begins unraveling, leaving readers to ponder the true nature of
justice. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
About the Author
From 1995 to 1997. Joe
Jackson was an investigative reporter for the Virginian-Pilot of
Norfolk, for which he covered police, state and federal courts, and
jails and prisons. He investigated Dennis Stockton's claims of
innocence and took the recantation of the states main witness during
Stockton's trial. His stories resulted in the acquittal of a man
wrongly accused of murder and a federal investigation of the Norfolk
Jail after sixteen of the prisoners died through the years, primarily
of medical neglect; he was nominated three times for the Pulitzer
Prize.
William
F. Burke, Jr. has been an editor at The Virginian-Pilot since 1980.
During his tenure, stories he has edited have received four Pulitzer
Prize nominations. He contacted Death Row inmates at the Macklenburg
Correctional Center following the notorious mass escape in 1984,
obtained Stockton's diaries, edited news stories based on the writings
and published Stockton's stories from death row, including one the day
of his execution.
Introduction by William Styron.
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