A mechanism and system are described for either releasing held resources in the case of a deadlock or to postpone requests for resources when a potential deadlock is detected. One technique involves a three pass algorithm for selecting a candidate, where the candidate is either a possessory entity or resource is used. The three passes are as follows: (1) determining the subset of candidates, which have the CAN-BE-VICTIM flag set on; (2) If pass one results in a subset with more than one candidates in it, process that subset to determine a second subset of candidates based on resource priority associated with a resource type; (3) If the second pass results in a subset with more than one candidate in it, process that subset to select the candidate that has been running or held the shortest length of time.