After Curtis Wallace was sentenced to 46-years-to-life in prison nearly two decades ago, for a shooting he has always maintained he did not commit, he made his family a promise: one day he would make it home in one piece.
Today, he worries that day will never come.
During the early morning hours of March 25 of this year, Wallace was stabbed in his sleep by a “jealous” cellmate.
“After that shocking incident, I'm no longer sure that I'll make it home,” Wallace told L.A. TACO in August.
For three years, Wallace has been waiting to see if the office of Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón will recommend that his conviction be overturned.
After having two applications for exoneration denied in 2018 under the previous administration, Wallace filed another claim with Gascón’s Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU) in June of 2021, after the newly elected, progressive prosecutor issued a number of sweeping policy changes.
In addition to setting up a resentencing unit, in charge of reviewing cases in which defendants saw their sentences greatly increased when accused of having gang affiliations, or in instances when they had already served more than 15 years in prison, Gascón also expanded the criteria that prosecutors use to determine if they should review a case in which a defendant believes they’ve been wrongfully convicted.
In Wallace’s case, gun and gang sentencing enhancements added more than three decades to his sentence. He has already spent nearly two decades behind bars. Only one witness identified him as the shooter during trial. And prosecutors never presented any physical evidence—such as gunshot residue swab results or fingerprints—that would have connected Wallace to the alleged firearm used in the shooting, according to Wallace.
Plus Wallace’s family has gathered new evidence that he believes clearly proves his innocence: an affidavit from his co-defendant, who was sentenced to life in prison in an unrelated case, making a confession to perpetrating the shooting.
Since Wallace applied to have his conviction thrown out, he hasn't heard a peep from the district attorney’s office in more than three years, other than a notice informing him that his case is being reviewed.
In that time, he’s been moved through six California prisons by California Corrections, where he has survived violent attacks, such as the early morning stabbing he experienced in March.
“They just kept shipping me around,” Wallace recalled. “I felt like they were trying to kill me or get me killed.”
Now the 42-year-old feels like he’s “running out of time” to make good on the promise he made to his family 18 years ago.
“My case is sitting on the [D.A.’s] desk, pending,” Wallace said. “Meanwhile, I’m in prison literally fighting for my life.”
In a prepared statement, the district attorney’s office said that they also find the process of reviewing cases to be frustratingly slow at times.
However, they defended the current process and stressed the importance of a thorough review.
“The conviction review process is detailed and labor intensive because it entails reconstructing the file, hunting down and poring through transcripts, and a renewed investigation,” the district attorney’s office wrote. “Notably, the vast majority of cases are many years old, posing additional challenges. These cases demand time and expertise.”
The D.A.'s office confirmed that Wallace’s claim is one of approximately 152 cases currently in “various stages of review” and said they’ve been in contact with two “representatives” that previously helped Wallace with his case.
Wallace said the two people that the D.A. is referring to were friends that helped him file his application with the Conviction Integrity Unit and later tried to seek updates from the district attorney’s office. Shortly after filing the application, there were conversations between the D.A.’s office and one of these friends, but not long after that, the communication stopped, according to Wallace.
Wallace has completely fallen out of contact with one of the two people who were helping him and is unable to reach them. But he remains in touch with the other friend, although they are not as invested in his case as they once were.
A spokesperson for the D.A.'s office told L.A. TACO: "We can confirm today that our office answered every one of the more than dozen communications from Mr. Wallace’s representatives, by email or by phone."
“When evidence leads the office to reconsider a conviction, District Attorney Gascón is deeply committed to righting the wrongs of the past,” the D.A.’s office said. “We recognize that the due process and diligence required in these cases is time-consuming, and that is a frustration that we share. But these cases necessarily require a comprehensive and precise approach.”
Fourteen people have been exonerated under the Gascón administration, a spokesperson for the district attorney confirmed. And five people have been resentenced through the Conviction Integrity Unit.
Gascón’s resentencing unit, which is separate from the CIU, has similarly faced criticism for moving slowly when it comes to reviewing cases for resentencing.
Last year, the Los Angeles Times reported that the district attorney’s office was struggling to “reform sentencing,” causing frustration and criticism among defense attorneys and advocates.
“I think the public has a total misconception of what’s going on,” veteran defense attorney Andy Stein said in that 2023 feature in the L.A. Times. “He’s not letting tons of people out, he’s letting hardly anybody out. … The road to hell is paved with good intentions. He’s under-equipped, underfunded.”
At one point, Gascón suggested that the resentencing unit could impact tens of thousands of defendants currently imprisoned.
But as of mid July of last year, only 95 people had been vetted by the unit and resentenced, according to data obtained by the L.A. Times.
The district attorney’s office confirmed with L.A. TACO that, as of earlier this month, a total of 300 people have been resentenced, resulting in 206 people being immediately released.
While Gascón’s supporters acknowledge that these figures are a notable improvement over the previous administration’s, some hoped that Gascón’s policy changes would have a greater impact.
In November, Gascón will defend his seat against Nathan Hochman, a former Republican, attorney general and a longtime critic of the progressive district attorney.
But for Wallace, simply hearing that his case is still being reviewed with the Conviction Integrity Unit gives him hope.
“I feel like I can relax,” he said after hearing the good news. “They’re probably really overwhelmed with cases.”
For years, Wallace had struggled to obtain updates on his case from the D.A.’s office.
Emails and letters submitted on his behalf went unanswered. And when he had a friend who was helping him with his case at the time physically go down to the district attorney’s office to confront them, they were “given the runaround,” Wallace said.
“You were able to get more information about my case in a few days than I have been able to get in three years,” Wallace told the reporter of this story.
Michael Semanchik, executive director of The Innocence Center, a non-profit law firm committed to freeing people from prison, says that under Gascón, things are “significantly better” when it comes to reviewing cases for exoneration.
Although there is always room for improvement.
“Of course I always want it to move faster,” Semanchik stressed. “If that means that more resources need to flow in that direction, I’d love to see that.”
When Semanchik helped free star linebacker Brian Banks, who took a plea deal following an accusation of sexual assault, back in 2012—while notoriously tough on crime District Attorney Steve Cooley was nearing the end of his tenure—there was no Conviction Integrity Unit. Gascón’s predecessor, Jackie Lacey, established the Conviction Review Unit in 2015 (Gascón renamed the unit when he took office.)
The difference between the unit under Lacey and Gascón is “night and day,” Semanchik says. Under Gascón, the unit has been “staffed up significantly” and more people are being exonerated.
“It’s hard for me to sit here and complain because I know where we’ve come from,” Semanchik says.
Recent cases that The Innocence Center worked on took between six months and two years from the time the non-profit presented their findings to the district attorney’s office to the day their client was exonerated, according to Semanchik.
And before even presenting their findings to the D.A.'s office, The Innocence Center sometimes spends years conducting their own investigation to confirm if a prospective client is innocent.
Defendants like Wallace, who pursue exoneration on their own, or with only the help of family and friends, are at a disadvantage, Semanchik believes.
Groups like The Innocence Center are able to do some of the time consuming, investigative “leg work” to move the process along faster for their clients. This might include DNA testing, gathering new evidence, or interviewing witnesses.
“Doing that from prison is sometimes almost impossible,” Semanchik says.
There is also a level of “trust” shared between the D.A’s office and The Innocence Center that works to their client’s advantage.
“A two year period might seem long, but it’s nothing compared to the length of time that it can take to get someone out of prison through the appeals process and litigation,” Semanchik points out.
But Semanchik also knows that “every day an innocent person spends in prison is a day they shouldn’t be there.”
When asked if he’s represented clients who have been assaulted while they waited to be freed, Semanchik says he can think of “plenty of times” when he's been working on a case in which he wholeheartedly believes the person is innocent and his client ends up dying in prison before he can get them out.
“It’s pretty crushing,” Semanchik says. “It’s just a testament to how long this process takes.”
