‘Ask God to forgive you ... I never will’: Wife of slain Stanislaus deputy confronts killer
“My husband lived his life seeing the best in everyone, even you,” Dennis Wallace’s wife said to her husband’s killer on Monday in Stanislaus County Superior Court.
Mercedes Wallace said Dennis Wallace was a compassionate man who did not judge the people he was tasked with arresting during his 20 years as a Stanislaus County sheriff’s deputy.
“He would have found a way to help you ... if you would have just taken a minute to talk to him,” Mercedes said to David Machado during his sentencing hearing Monday. “Instead, you chose the cowardly way and used a gun and killed him and you took his life and destroyed mine, and for that I will never forgive you.”
Mercedes spoke about all that she misses and all that she and her family were robbed of when Machado killed Wallace in 2016.
A slideshow of photos of a smiling Wallace alongside family and friends played on a projector as Mercedes and others gave their victim impact statements. “I want you to look at the pictures on the screen and see what you took from me,” she said to Machado.
“Every day, I have to wake up without his green eyes looking at me; his gorgeous smile and his dimples smiling at me; when he brought me my cup of coffee every morning; his compliments; letting me know how much he loved me ...,” Mercedes said.
She repeatedly told Machado he is a “coward” and “evil” and said she will never understand why God put him in her husband’s path that day.
“My Dennis may not be standing here next to me, but his legacy will live on ... while you will be forgotten after today.”
“After today, I will close this chapter on my life and try to find peace in knowing that you will rot in a cell for a very, very long time,” Mercedes continued. “I hope one day you feel remorse for your actions and ask God to forgive you, because I never will.”
Machado shot Wallace at close range in the head and neck at Fox Grove Fishing Access in Hughson on Nov. 13, 2016. The shooting occurred shortly after a dispatcher told Wallace that Machado had been flagged for officer safety concerns and was in possession of a van his mother reported he stole.
After shooting Wallace, Machado fled, carjacked a couple in Ceres and tried to carjack a woman in a small town in Tulare County before he was captured by two officers.
A jury last year found Machado guilty of Wallace’s murder, being a felon in possession of a firearm, two counts of carjacking and attempted carjacking.
But Machado had pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity and, following the sanity phase in the trail, the jury found he was sane during the carjackings but jurors could not agree on whether he was sane at the time of the murder. They were split 9-3 in favor of an insanity verdict on the counts of murder and being a felon in possession of a firearm so a mistrial was declared.
A second trial for those counts was scheduled to begin in March, but the defense and the prosecution, with the blessing of Wallace’s family, instead settled on a plea agreement. Machado withdrew his insanity plea in exchange for a sentence of 45 years to life in prison. He had been facing a sentence of life without the possibility of parole.
