Prison term ends for man who shot Gov. Wallace in 1972

Published 10:58 pm Thursday, November 8, 2007

HAGERSTOWN, Md. — The man who shot Alabama Gov. George Wallace during a presidential campaign stop in 1972 is scheduled to be released from a Maryland prison today.

An e-mail from the state’s automated victim-notification system Thursday announced the release date for Arthur Bremer, 57.

Wallace was paralyzed and abandoned his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination after he was wounded May 15, 1972, in the shooting in Laurel, Md. Wallace died in 1998.

Wallace family members in Montgomery, Ala., said they had not received notification Thursday morning. George Wallace Jr. said he and his family have forgiven Bremer but have doubts that he has been punished enough.

“My father forgave him and my family has forgiven him. That’s consistent with God’s law. Then there is man’s law. I doubt the punishment has fit the crime,” Wallace said.

Bremer has served about 35 years of a 53-year sentence. He earned his release through good behavior and by working jobs in prison. He is at the medium-security Maryland Correctional Institution in Hagerstown.

A former segregationist, Wallace stood defiantly at the all-white University of Alabama in a symbolic face-off with the Justice Department as the National Guard stood by and two black students enrolled in 1963.

By 1972, he had tempered his racist rhetoric and adopted a more subtle approach, denouncing federal courts over the “involuntary busing” of schoolchildren to meet desegregation orders and pledging to restore “law and order.”