Nov 12, 2015 2 min read

A status conference was held Thursday for William “Tippy” Wallace’s fourth homicide trial.

Wallace is accused of killing Canonsburg dry cleaner Carl Luisi, 63, and his young clerk, Tina Spalla, 15, in a robbery of Carl’s Cleaners, Adams Avenue, Aug. 17, 1979. For fatally shooting Luisi, Wallace received a life sentence on a second-degree murder conviction. For Spalla’s first-degree murder, the jury gave Wallace a death sentence.

The hourlong meeting was held in Washington County Judge John F. DiSalle’s chambers and focused on court procedures. A second status conference will be scheduled for December.

Wallace’s first trial in 1980 before a Washington County jury ended in a mistrial when jurors could not agree on a verdict. He was a convicted by an Erie County jury a year later, but the State Supreme Court overturned the conviction in 1983. A Somerset County jury convicted him in 1985, but U.S. District Judge Sean McLaughlin vacated Wallace’s death penalty in 2007, and the case languished until early this year, when new President Judge Katherine B. Emery assigned it to DiSalle.

Last week, DiSalle signed an order scheduling Thursday’s status conference and appointed attorney Dennis J. Popojas to represent Wallace.

Wallace, 61, was not present for the hearing. He is imprisoned at the State Correctional Institution-Greene.

Wallace and co-defendant, Henry Eugene Brown, were arrested in their Wheeling, W.Va., neighborhood days after the double homicide. Brown pointed to Wallace as the shooter. He had previously entered a guilty plea and was sentenced to two concurrent life terms, but, on the eve of Wallace’s third trial, under a plea bargain with then-District Attorney John C. Pettit, Brown’s sentence was renegotiated to third-degree murder, with a total maximum sentence not to exceed 10 to 20 years in exchange for his testimony against Wallace.

A new trial date has not yet been set.