Portland man gets life in killings of kin

PORTLAND — A man facing a possible death sentence for killing his mother and a nephew has made a bargain with prosecutors: a life sentence without possibility of parole and no appeals to higher courts.

Adrien Graham Wallace was sentenced Tuesday, The Oregonian reported.

Last week, a jury took about 12 minutes to convict him of aggravated murder. After conferring with his attorneys, Wallace decided not to go ahead with the sentencing phase in which the jury could have sentenced him to die.

Wallace did not deny killing Saundra Sue Wallace, 71, in 2012 along with Nicholas “Nick” Brian Juarez, 16. They were shot nearly 20 times from about three feet with a military-style rifle.

His lawyers mounted an insanity defense.

A psychologist, Henry Miller, testified that Wallace suffered from psychosis that began when he was a child, kept three loaded weapons to protect him from monsters and got orders from God to “attack and kill” on June 4, 2012.

But a prosecutor, Chris Owen, noted that Wallace didn’t bring up what was termed a “command hallucination” until nine months after the killings.

Wallace also had a history of violent encounters with relatives and others, including one in which he threatened to kill his mother and his psychiatrist if his application for Social Security disability benefits was denied, Owen said.

He held his mother hostage for about four hours, Owen said, and his mother reported at the time that he ransacked the house, refused to flush the toilet, and left half-buried bottles of urine in the backyard along with crosses that were painted half-white, half-black.

His lawyers made an insanity defense, and a psychologist said he had paranoid schizophrenia.