Prison to free George Wallace’s shooter
WASHINGTON – Arthur Bremer, the man who attempted to assassinate Alabama Gov. George Wallace during his 1972 presidential campaign, is scheduled to walk out of the Maryland Correctional Institute at Hagerstown in December, after 35 years in prison.
Bremer, 57, has never publicly expressed remorse for the shooting that left Wallace paralyzed and in pain for the rest of his life, but Wallace’s son said his family has forgiven him.
“I think God’s law has been adhered to, and we’re comfortable with that,” George Wallace Jr. told the Press-Register, of Mobile, Ala. “But having said that, I don’t believe that given the suffering my father endured all those years from the gunshots and the constant paralysis – I don’t think Arthur Bremer’s incarceration comes close to that type of suffering.”
Bremer was a 21-year-old busboy from Milwaukee when he approached Wallace after a campaign stop before a boisterous crowd of about 2,000 in the suburban Laurel (Md.) Shopping Center parking lot. Wallace, a prominent segregationist who had won three Democratic primaries and was expected to win in Maryland and Michigan, had just finished speaking when Bremer shot him with a .38-caliber revolver at close range. An Alabama state trooper, a Secret Service agent and a Wallace campaign volunteer were also wounded.
From the day the bullets entered his chest and stomach – one lodging near his spine – until the day he died 26 years later, Wallace was paralyzed in both legs, lived in constant pain and suffered a variety of maladies as a result of his injuries.
A jury in Prince George’s County, Md., rejected Bremer’s insanity defense, and the judge sentenced him to 63 years in prison, later reduced to 53 years by a county Circuit Court panel.
“It was not a difficult case. The result was automatic, almost, under the circumstances,” said Arthur Marshall, the former Prince George’s state’s attorney who prosecuted the case. “The sentence was, I think, appropriate.”
A case manager, Leonard Vaughan, said that Bremer is to be released under a state program that reduces prison time for inmates who have a prison job and maintain good behavior.
Bremer, a clerk in the prison, could be released sooner than December, Vaughan said, because he earns more days off his sentence each month. He has been at Hagerstown since 1979.
Marshall said that in such cases inmates are often released after finishing half of their sentences. “He served well more than 50 percent of it. I guess it’s about time,” Marshall said.
Details about where Bremer will live after his release were unavailable. He will be required to check in regularly with a pardons and parole officer until the end of his official sentence, May 15, 2025.
Benjamin Lipsitz, the Baltimore lawyer who defended Bremer, would not comment on the case without his client’s permission.
“He’s always been pretty adamant about not speaking to the media,” Lipsitz said.
Bremer’s only commentary has come from a diary he kept leading up to the attempted assassination.
He wrote that Nixon had been his initial target before he shifted his focus to the Alabama governor, whose outspoken views opposing racial integration made him one of America’s most controversial political figures.
“It’s worth death or a long trial and life in prison,” Bremer wrote in the diary. “Life outside ain’t so hot. I want to do something bold and dramatic, forceful and dynamic. A statement of my manhood for the world to see.”