Indiana

March 10, 2005

The state of Indiana is scheduled to execute Donald Ray Wallace March 10 for the murders of Patrick, Teresa, Lisa, and Gregory Gilligan in 1980 in Vigo County.  He killed the family after burglarizing their home unaware that the family was in the house. 

At the sentencing phase of Wallace’s trial, the judge found there were three aggravating factors that made Wallace eligible for the death penalty.  First, Wallace had committed the murders while he was burglarizing the Gilligan home.  Second, Wallace had committed multiple murders.  Third, Wallace, then 22, had committed the murders while on parole from a prior felony unrelated to the Gilligan case.  But in the years since Wallace was convicted of the murders, that felony conviction was overturned, along with a second felony conviction on Wallace’s record.  The state of Indiana is required to weigh the aggravating factors against any mitigating ones in order to determine whether the death sentence should be given.  On appeal, Wallace’s attorneys requested his death sentence be overturned because it was not determined through the weighing of accurate aggravating factors.  At least two circuit judges dissented from the denial of Wallace’s petition for a rehearing. 

There is reason to believe that Wallace was not able to assist his counsel at trial in his own defense due, at least in part, to his mental state and difficult childhood.  The defense attorney at trial did not inform the jury of the defendant’s difficult childhood. Court records indicate Wallace was not cooperative in helping his attorney in gathering mitigating evidence.  Wallace told the state judge that his counsel “did in fact approach me and try to develop all these sources that they are prepared to present and uh – which at the time I forbid them to do that, I repeatedly forbidden it.  Finally he acceded to my wishes.”  Wallace was confined to a mental hospital for nearly two years and declared incompetent for trial after the crimes were committed. Then, a state judge found Wallace competent, concluding Wallace was faking incompetence.  Therefore, he was permitted to make major decisions about his defense.

State records show Wallace suffered extreme emotional disturbance from a very young age and a experienced a loveless and insecure childhood.  His teenage parents divorced when he was four and his mother left him in the care of his father who did not seem to love or parent him.  His mother eventually left town.  At one point in Wallace’s youth he recalls playing with his grandfather’s gun until his grandmother instructed his grandfather to take it from him.  Wallace’s grandfather took the gun from him and drove away committing suicide immediately afterward.  By age 11, Wallace was living at the Evansville Psychiatric Children’s Center.  It was the first of a handful of institutions in which he would live for the next ten years.  At the age of 14, Wallace was sent to a medium-maximum juvenile security prison where he says he learned to become a criminal and to exhibit violence in order to gain respect from others. 

Wallace, who has spent more than 23 years on death row, maintains he is reformed and is not the same young man he was when he entered prison.  Likewise, his attorney is convinced of his reform.  Since entering death row, he has reinvented himself through “thousands of days and nights” in deep self-examination and devoted study of religion and philosophy.  He has taught himself Greek, Arabic, and Latin studied Buddhism and other religions and says he has become a man of peace.

Even after 23 years of going through the trial and appeals process, Wallace has yet to have a jury weigh his accurate and complete aggravating and mitigating factors in order to determine whether a death sentence is appropriate.  Furthermore, the man whom Indiana is now trying to execute is very different from the young man who committed the crimes. Please take a moment to write Governor Mitch Daniels asking that he commute Wallace’s sentence.