ABSTRACT
CONVINCING JUDGE A. J. WAGNER to reverse his own decision on Dean Gillispie would be a formidable challenge. The judge had consistently sided with Prosecutor Mat Heck. The Heck name was well established in Montgomery County law and
politics. Mathias H. Heck Sr. had been county prosecutor when Mathias H. Heck Jr. was a boy. After becoming an attorney, Heck Jr. rose up in the prosecutor’s office and eventually became chief trial counsel prosecuting the county’s death penalty cases. He became county prosecutor in 1992 and has been re-elected without interruption through this writing.1
