Chante Jawan Mallard : Accused of killing homeless man.

What do you think?

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FORT WORTH, Texas, June 27 — A jury sentenced Chante Mallard to 50 years in prison Friday for allowing a man she struck with her car to die a slow death while lodged in the car’s broken windshield.
MALLARD, 27, a former nurse’s aide, had faced a sentence of up to life in prison in the death of Gregory Biggs after the jury took less than an hour to convict her of murder Thursday.
Jurors also sentenced Mallard to the maximum 10 years for her guilty plea to tampering with evidence. The sentences will run concurrently.
Tears streamed down Mallard’s cheeks as the sentences were read.
“There’s no winners in a case like this. Just as we all lost Greg, you all will be losing your daughter,” Biggs’ son, Brandon, told Mallard’s family in a statement he read in court after the sentence was announced.
Both families declined to comment afterward. “My heart is heavy, truly heavy,” said Norma Caruthers, a friend who counseled Mallard in jail.
Defense attorney Jeff Kearney said he was upset with the length of the sentence, which was announced after jurors deliberated about two hours.
“We certainly knew it would be a significant prison sentence based on all the evidence, but we were hoping it would be somewhat lighter,” he said.

DRINKING AND DRUGS
Mallard hit Biggs on a highway after a night of drinking and using drugs, then drove home with him lodged in her windshield and left him to die in her garage. She tearfully told the jury Thursday that she was sorry and that she did not call for help because she was scared and did not know what to do.
Tarrant County Assistant District Attorney Richard Alpert told the jury that Mallard deserved a life sentence. He said her explanation “is all about selfishness.”
“Some people lack the moral fiber to do the right thing,” he said. “A man is laying in her car moaning and bleeding and she needs someone to tell her what to do? Any decent person would call for help.”
Mallard’s attorney, Jeff Kearney, argued that “throwing another life away accomplishes nothing.”
“Please don’t throw this life away,” he told jurors.
On the stand Friday, toxicologist Gary Wimbish testified that the Ecstasy that Mallard consumed along with alcohol that night would impair a person’s ability to respond rationally to an emergency.
Biggs’ son also testified, saying his father, a former bricklayer, will now never share the milestones in his life.
“He’ll not be here to see me get married. He’ll not be here to watch me grow old and launch out into a profession,” a composed Brandon Biggs told the jury.

MALLARD TELLS HER SIDE
As the sentencing phase opened Thursday, Mallard took the stand and for the first time publicly described what happened.
She said she did not remember seeing Biggs along the road as she drove home about 3 a.m. Oct. 26, 2001. She heard a loud thud, she said, and then his body crashed through the windshield, sending glass flying into her face.
Biggs’ head and torso hung over her dashboard through the broken windshield. Mallard said she got out of her car and touched his leg, sticking out through the broken glass, then got back in and drove home and parked in her garage.
She said she heard the man moan and knew he was alive, but she never called for help. She was too afraid she’d be arrested and because of the drugs she “couldn’t think to do the right thing,” she said.
“I was asking God to tell me what to do,” she said. “I didn’t know what to do. I was scared and I was crying.”
Medical experts testified during her trial that Biggs was probably alive for one to two hours after he was hit and that he probably would have survived he had gotten medical treatment.
“I have ruined the lives of other people,” Mallard said Thursday, sobbing as she apologized to Biggs’ 20-year-old son, Brandon Biggs, and to her own family. “I have put people through pain. And I am so truly sorry. I’m so sorry, Brandon. I am so sorry for what I have caused your family and I am sorry for the pain that I have put my family through.”
She said she deserved to go to prison but did not say for how long.
Biggs’ battered body was found in a park the day after he was hit. Mallard’s friend Clete Deneal Jackson testified that Mallard took him to her garage about six hours after she hit Biggs. He said he removed Biggs’ body that night and, with the help of his cousin Herbert Tyrone Cleveland dumped it in the park.
Both men pleaded guilty to tampering with evidence and agreed to testify against Mallard as part of plea agreements. Jackson was sentenced to 10 years; Cleveland was sentenced to nine years.
Authorities had no leads in Biggs’ death until four months later, when one of Mallard’s acquaintances called police and said she talked about the incident at a party.
Officers went to Mallard’s house and found the bloodstained, dented car. They also found the passenger seat burned in the back yard.


Personally, I think this is utterly DISGUSTING. This woman should be given the death sentence. This is gross.

I absolutely agree that she deserved what she got. I would have rathered she got life...I am sure she will get out on parole before she is toooo elderly which is a shame. It wasn't the fact that she struck the man...although I strongly detest driving under the influence...but the fact that she just allowed that man to slowly bleed to death! And doesn't she work in the health industry as a nurses aide or something? Talk about depraived indifference and a total lack of empathy. I don't even think her tears were really for the victim but rather for the fact that she was caught and now had to pay the price. The fact that she continued on with her partying after she killed the man says volumes as to the moral character of this woman.

I've been watching this on the news a lot since its pretty close to me. I really agree with everything Denyce said. That woman was under the influence of drugs and alcohol while driving. She needs to pay for what she's done. Driving home with him in her windshield is just SICK and wrong :(

posted by aly: That woman was under the influence of drugs and alcohol while driving. She needs to pay for what she's done. Driving home with him in her windshield is just SICK and wrong :(>>>>>>>

When I first heard the story, I thought it came out
of a horror movie.
Unbelievably SICK! Ditto from me too Aly.

I think she needed to get a life sentence without parole, but not the death sentence since it was not premeditated. She needs to get serious counseling for her drug and alcohol addiction. Pretty sick puppy if you ask me.

That woman needs some serious help. The whole story disgusts me. She needs to be run over and stuck in a windshield for a few hours.

Life in prison is what she deserves, not death. Plenty of time for her to clean up, get all the influence of drugs out of her system, and then think long and hard about what she did.

And think and think and think and learn to live with the thought and learn to apologize to the man's family and think and think and to realize that actions and criminal inaction have consequences.

The nephew of the guy that got hit got to talk to her after the sentence came down and told her that she would be able to have people visit and to talk to and have 3 squares a day and be out when she was in her 70s, but the guy that was hit would never be able to do that again and that his family would not have the ability to visit with him ever again.

That is so very sad....I'm of the opinion that life in prison without perole is a waste...if they're never getting out, why not put them to death? Than again...I don't know. She certainly got off too lightly. In this case, in my mind, torture would be a fitting punishment.

I am reminded of a semi-local teenager who hit and killed a six year old girl one morning and continued on her way to school. She's getting off with a mere five years. I was beyond infuriated!! It still makes me shake with anger to think about it. The six year old who died's friend was walking to school with her, and now is feeling incredibly guilty that she didn't push her friend out of the way. Can you IMAGINE living with that kind of pain at six?!

Maybe Bill O'Reilley's thoughts on the death penalty and such would work here. He is TOTALLY against the death penalty because it's too easy for the killer. He thinks that they should create work camps in Alaska and have them do hard labor as their sentence. Interesting thought.....maybe while she was pounding rocks with a 20 pound sledge she might start to reconsider her ways? Just a thought.