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Blogs by Diana E Harrington
exerpt from SURVIVING THE DEATH PENALTY, a confession letter
10/12/2007 10:56:59 AM
This is a letter of confession to me from Donald Ray Wallace Jr. in 1992 (12 years after the crime) from death row. Even after this confession letter to me he continued his plea for innocence to his attorney's and the court. He continued his appeals and his antics from death row for an additional 13 years.
He announced his guilt to this crime one week before his execution in 2005 on national TV in an interview.... 25 years after the crime and 23 years on death row.
2 August 1992
Dear Ms. Harrington:
.....The answer to your question of why has no single answer. It was just a chain of bad circumstances that went from bad to worse. To begin with, my life at that time had been reduced to injecting drugs and doing burglaries so I could get more drugs. You've heard some of my history, so maybe you can glimpse the torment from which I tried to hide in drugs. In any case, I was not a rational, well-adjusted human being at that time. That's the first bad circumstance. The second bad circumstance was the deadbolt locks. They tend to keep people out of a house. But if they get in nevertheless, deadbolt locks keep them from getting out. The only door through which to escape in that house that night was the laundry room door. Patrick entered through the garage door, making it impossible simply to flee. The idea at that time was to try to get the situation under control by tying everyone up to have a few minutes within which to get away. The pistol was reholstered to tie up the last person---Theresa. Just as that was completed, Patrick slipped his bonds and attacked. I don't know if he was extraordinarily brave, or if he didn't trust that his family wouldn't be hurt, or both. In the struggle over the pistol, Patrick was shot in the head, and he fell to his hands and knees. Then everything else just went to hell. Everyone was shot within 10 seconds after Patrick --drugs, panic, insanity--it all happened too fast to understand. Neither of the children cried out-- that was an invention of a "witness" who really didn't know anything about what happened that night. No one had time to cry out. Patrick was hit twice with the barbells, without any conception of how badly it would appear afterwards. There was nothing systematic or calculating about it at that point--there was no rhyme or reason for anything at that point. No conscious decisions made. It was just all a frenzied blur. I was even bewildered as I took in the scene afterwards. In an instant the whole world had turned upside down. And I was ill in a way I had never been ill before --my entire body felt intensely ill. I relive this scene in nightmares over and over again. so I usually try to stay awake for 40-60- hours at a time so that I will be so tired that I won't dream.
I must have misspoke myself in my previous letter. I meant to say only that I thought I deserved to die, not that I wanted to. But the time is soon coming when it won't matter what I want. So I venture that, when they do execute me, I hoped you felt better for it. In answer to your question, though, no--my death won't correct the mistake of January 14, 1980. It will only leave more grieving people.
... you ask how you can ever reassure your children when Theresa couldn't. But Theresa did, and they were calmed. And I guess you have to tell children that everything is going to be all right even if you think it isn't. We spare them as long as we can from the adulthood knowledge that there is no assurance about anything in this world. That's true for all adults, even though some of us have felt its sting more than others have or will. But you have to go on even where there's no assurance, or you assure that you go nowhere.
When you leave your home at night, draw the curtains so no one can see within and determine that no one is home. Leave lights on, and leave a television set on at a fair volume. Burglars don't enter homes when they think someone is in them. Most burglars cruise down streets looking for homes which look like no one is in. They generally don't even stop and investigate unless a house is darkened. They drive on past lighted homes.
Sincerely,
Donald Wallace
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