Henry Louis Wallace - On Death Row

On Death Row

On June 5, 1998, Wallace married a former prison nurse, Rebecca Torrijas, in a ceremony next to the execution chamber where he has been sentenced to die. Mecklenburg County public defender Isabel Day served as an official witness and photographer. Also attending was the manager of the Death Row unit at the prison.

Since being sentenced to death in 1997, Wallace has been appealing to the courts to overturn the death sentences, stating that his confessions were coerced and his constitutional rights were violated in the process.

In 2005, Superior Court Judge Charles Lamm rejected Wallace's latest appeal to overturn his convictions and nine death sentences, moving him another step closer to execution.

The legal battle to save Wallace had already been through the state and federal courts. The North Carolina Supreme Court upheld the death sentences in 2000. The U.S. Supreme Court in 2001 denied his appeal.

Lamm's rejection is the first in a second round of appeals that will likely wind through state and federal courts again in the next few years.

No execution date has yet been set for Wallace.

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