The bride wore white. The groom wore prison whites.
The wedding took place in Houston, although the 32-year-old groom, Randy Halprin, was 76 miles away in West Livingston at the Allan B. Polunsky Unit, which houses Texas' death row inmates. Randy had been held there since 2003, when he was convicted—along with the rest of the surviving Texas Seven prison escapees—of murdering an Irving police officer on Christmas Eve 2000.
Crystal Wilson, the 36-year-old bride, went before the justice of the peace with a friend standing in for Randy, a lawful procedure in Texas called marriage by proxy. The couple faced hurdles on their path to matrimonial bliss. Barring a reversal of Randy's conviction, or a loosening of Texas prison rules, man and wife in this marriage would never be allowed to touch. They wouldn't be able to talk as much as they wanted to, either; on death row, there are no phone privileges. To have anything resembling even a normal prison marriage would take a miracle.
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