A Jacksonville woman who has been behind bars for more than 4 years awaiting a disposition in her federal drug and gun case was finally sentenced yesterday in a federal courtroom in Springfield.
25-year old Katrina S. Wallace, formerly of the 300 block of West State Street was initially arrested along with one other individual by Jacksonville Police in May 2020 after a shots fired incident at an apartment building on West State Street. Wallace was arrested again in September 2020 by a multiple law enforcement officers after a high speed chase through Greene and Morgan Counties that resulted in further gun and drug charges.
Wallace’s case was transferred to the U.S. Central District Court of Illinois in October 2020 and has seen multiple continuances since then. Wallace pleaded guilty to four of five federal charges in October 23, 2023 which included both methamphetamine and cannabis trafficking and aggravated unlawful use of a weapon charges. A charge of unlawful transport of firearms was dropped per the plea agreement.
In a sentencing hearing yesterday, Wallace provided a statement of allocution to the court. Wallace had previously been sentenced to 6 years in the Illinois Department of Corrections for an aggravated battery charge in Kankakee County while serving as a prisoner there awaiting trial. According to statements filed with the federal court, she got into a fight with a fellow inmate while awaiting trial. In her statement of allocution, Wallace said an unstable home life and her mother and father’s own imprisonment and drug addiction were factors into her own life of crime. Wallace said she would be pursuing her GED in hopes of one day becoming a realtor once out of prison.
Judge Colleen Lawless sentenced Wallace to 15 1/5 years in the Bureau of Prisons, 4 years of mandatory supervised release, and ordered payment of a $400 special assessment. Wallace will also have special conditions in her supervised release that must be met or she would be returned to prison.