Wallace Shooter to Be Released

Arthur H. Bremer, who has been charged in the shooting of Ala. Gov. George C. Wallace, is taken into custody by police and agents moments after Wallace was shot, May 15, 1972, following a campaign speech in Laurel, Md. Bremer was sentenced to 53 years in prison for shooting Wallace and three bystanders. Bremer will be released from prison in 2007, an official said Thursday, Aug 23, 2007. He has served 35 years of the sentence. (AP Photo/File) (AP)

BALTIMORE -- Arthur Bremer was a 21-year-old former janitor and busboy when he shot Alabama Gov. George Wallace five times during a presidential campaign stop in 1972 in Maryland.

Now 57, Bremer is preparing for life outside prison. He's scheduled to be released in mid-December and could get out even sooner.

Bremer has never publicly expressed remorse for the shooting. He has not granted a single interview during his 35 years behind bars. He's never gotten into trouble, either.

"He was a model inmate," said Ruth Ogle, a program manager for the Maryland Parole Commission. "He never had an infraction the entire time he was incarcerated."

The commission denied parole for Bremer in 1996, on the grounds that releasing him would diminish the seriousness of his crime. He could have asked for a reconsideration of that decision, but he never did.

However, Bremer has shaved nearly two decades off his 53-year sentence with good behavior and by working jobs in prison. Bremer currently works as a clerk at the medium-security Maryland Correctional Institute-Hagerstown, where he's been lived since 1979.

His release is scheduled for Dec. 16, but that's likely to change as he continues to accumulate credits for work and good behavior, said Rae Sheeley, a case management specialist at the prison.

Wallace was seeking the Democratic nomination to challenge President Richard Nixon when he was wounded May 15, 1972, outside a shopping center in Laurel. Three bystanders were shot but weren't seriously hurt.

The attack left the former segregationist with paralyzed legs and forced him to abandon his populist bid for the presidency. Despite declining health, he was elected to two more terms as Alabama's governor. He died in 1998.

Bremer's diary indicated that he had stalked Nixon before turning his sights on Wallace, and that he was seeking notoriety when he planned to assassinate a political leader. Yet his silence since his conviction diminished his infamy.

"I shy away from publicity," he said during his parole hearing, according to a transcript. "There's nothing I could say, and if I did say something, it could be interpreted the worst way possible against me."

Wallace's son, former state treasurer George Wallace Jr., told the Press-Register of Mobile, Ala., that he got word of Bremer's impending release about two weeks ago.