Looks like a good day for writing about responsibility.
Chante Mallard has been sentenced to 60 years in jail for murdering Gregory Biggs and then tampering with the evidence. I'm sure everyone is familiar with the case by now; the evidence she tampered with was Gregory Biggs' body, which became embedded in Mallard's windshield after she struck him while driving under the influence of numerous substances. Biggs didn't die immediately, however, and Mallard drove home with him still half through her windshield, parked her car in her garage, and left him there for several hours until he died. Mallard then called up her ex-boyfriend and his cousin who helped her "tamper the evidence" into a nearby park. She wasn't caught until several months later when a friend reported that she had joked about the incident at a party. Doctors declared that Biggs would have lived had he recieved prompt medical care, but Mallard decided it would be more convenient to let him die.
Her lawyer claims that she isn't a horrible person, but frankly I'm hard-pressed to think of a more callous act. A pre-mediated murder is less scary to me, because at least it's targetted against a specific individual. Mallard was just driving along, hit some random guy, and purposefully let him die; that could have been me!
"She could have saved him," said Tarrant County Assistant District Attorney Christy Jack. "Doesn't that speak volumes about her character? Doesn't that speak volumes about the atrocity of this crime?"Yes. Yes it does.
To those who argue so strenuously for the legalization of various drugs, consider this:
Mallard, who admitted she had been drinking, smoking marijuana and doing the drug ecstasy the night of the accident, said drugs had ruined her life and she wanted to get treatment.
