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Michael Ainsworth / DMN
A sheriff's deputy escorts Chante Mallard into the courtroom on the first day of her murder trial at the 371st District Court at the Tarrant County Justice Center.Posted on 06/23/2003 2:51:13 PM PDT by MeekOneGOP
Mallard pleads not guilty to murder
06/23/2003
FORT WORTH, Texas - A former nurse's aide smoked pot, took ecstasy and drank heavily in the hours before she hit a homeless man and drove home while he was lodged in her windshield, prosecutors and defense attorneys told jurors as her murder trial began Monday.
Chante Jawan Mallard, 27, faces life in prison if convicted. She pleaded guilty to a lesser charge, tampering with evidence, before attorneys began their opening statements on the murder charge.
Although she had taken drugs, Mallard could have stopped at a nearby fire or police station or called an ambulance after she hit Gregory Biggs on a highway in the early hours of Oct. 26, 2001, prosecutor Christy Jack said.
Michael Ainsworth / DMN A sheriff's deputy escorts Chante Mallard into the courtroom on the first day of her murder trial at the 371st District Court at the Tarrant County Justice Center. |
"All of a sudden -- bam -- he was just there," Mallard said in a statement to police, which Jack read to jurors.
Mallard did stop briefly to try and get Biggs off her car, but when she couldn't, she drove about a mile to her home, Jack said. Mallard then called one of her friends to pick her up, Jack said.
She and her friend then went to find Mallard's ex-boyfriend to figure out what to do next. When they couldn't find him, they went back to the house, where Mallard took the friend into the garage, Jack said. By that time, Biggs was dead, still lodged and bleeding in the jagged windshield.
The friend told Mallard to call 911, Jack said.
"Chante refused because she didn't want her parents to know what she'd done and didn't want to go to jail," Jack said.
Defense attorney Jeff Kearney said Mallard was in a drug-induced haze and had been hit in the face with flying glass when the car hit Biggs. He said she doesn't dispute what happened, but it was an accident, not murder.
She was just one exit from her home, so she kept driving with "a body entirely in her car, the head in the floorboard, legs going in directions that no one thought humanely possible. You can't imagine," Kearney said.
He said after Mallard pulled into her garage and lowered the door, she sat in the car and cried, repeatedly apologizing to Biggs, who was moaning.
When the friend arrived at the house, Mallard was hysterical and "was blabbing, 'Lord, I'm sorry. What do I do? Lord, I'm sorry. It was an accident. What do it do?"' Kearney said.
Biggs, 37, a former bricklayer who had been living in a homeless shelter, was found dead the next day, his body dumped in a park.
When pictures of Biggs' twisted, bruised and bloody body were shown Monday on a large screen in the courtroom, Mallard looked down, and some jurors grimaced or looked away. Biggs' relatives were not in the room when the photos were displayed.
Mallard's attorney said Clete Jackson, one of two men who pleaded guilty to helping dump Biggs' body, orchestrated moving Biggs to Cobb Park.
Jackson received a 10-year sentence for tampering with evidence. His cousin, Herbert Tyrone Cleveland, received nine years. As part of plea agreements, they were to testify at Mallard's trial.
Police initially said Biggs lived for several days in Mallard's garage, slowly bleeding to death from his multiple fractures and cuts.
But Tarrant County Medical Examiner Nizam Peerwani later said Biggs, whose left leg was nearly amputated, probably lived only a few hours after he was hit. He could have survived if he had received medical attention, Peerwani said.
When Biggs' body was found in the park, authorities had no leads until four months later, when a tipster said Mallard talked about the incident at a party.
The day after interviewing the tipster in February 2002, police went to Mallard's house with a search warrant.
Detective Don Owings told jurors Monday that after serving the search warrant, he saw the car in the garage with the seats missing and the windshield and rear glass broken. Officers have said they found dark stains on the passenger-side floorboard and burned car seats in her back yard.
Owings testified that 14 officers accompanied him to Mallard’s home. She was not ill-treated, he said, and she understood her rights as she was interrogated.
“She was upset. She had cried some,” he said. “But she allowed me to take the statement.”
Straw men---to say that act X does not harm another individual is not to say that act X is "OK with me" much less "part of my perfect world."
See my # 202.
They do, in your words, "follow the same line of thinking." One side says there's no harm; the other side disagrees. Thus, a pro-abort gun rights advocate could just as easily accuse you of "gungrabber logic" in regard to your pro-life stand. A Larry Flynt-like FReeper could make the same point regarding porn. Prostitution? Same.
And, for what it's worth (in view of your profile), while alcohol is condoned in the Bible, drugs are condemned. See Gal. 5:20, where "witchcraft" or "sorcery" is translated from pharmakia in the original Greek text, which is the use of illicit drugs.
No, in the abortion debate one side says there's no other individual and the other side disagrees.
Alcohol as an object is condoned? I know drunkenness is not. Gluttony is a sin no matter the object. Overeating is a sin, just as overdoing it with alcohol or any other substance.
"No"? You're full of yourself, kid. Go play in the street.
Disagreeing with the great newgeezer is an act of vanity?
But doctors in California are not held to the same standard. If a doctor gets caught shoplifting, he won't lose his license, but a nurse will. That is a double standard.
Given enough time, you just might outgrow the boorish tendencies of your youth.
Yes, obviously. On the other hand, pharmakia is wholly condemned. We don't find any mention of mind-altering pharmaceuticals used responsibly or in moderation.
(By the way, if there is any biblical basis for the "moderation in all things" philosophy some hold to be so dear, I'm not aware of it.)
Now, I'm not saying this is so clear as to put an end to the why-alcohol-should-be-legal-and-drugs-not debate for bible-believing Christians. But, for those of us who care about Truth, this presents something to consider, at the very least.
According to an account at court tv, she has claimed she only had 2 drinks before heading home and that she concluded somebody must have slipped a drug into her drink because she felt "funny." She also claimed that the two men she summoned to her house to help her with her "problem" in the garage were vague in stating their intentions, saying only "we'll take care of it." She had plenty of time to cook up a cover story that portrays her as a victim, a victim of a drug in her drink, a victim of somebody else removing the body without her knowledge or consent, a victim of false statements from malicious witnesses, etc.
None of this will help her at trial, since she has already admitted
-that she left the scene with the victim in her car
-that she hid him in her garage
-that she failed to render assistance or to summon an ambulance
-that she subsequently failed to report the accident at all
-that she attempted to destroy evidence by burning the car seat
-that she was not incapacited, ie. that she was fully capable of driving home and of phoning her friends
-that she realized the seriousness of what she had done, ie. crying, apologizing to the wounded victim, summoning friends for help.
Doctors should not be allowed to be held to a lower standard than nurses. If a nurse can lose her license PERMANENTLY in the state of California for shoplifting, or even a significant MVA, doctors should lose their licenses for similar infractions but they don't. That needs to be changed.
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