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Postmeditation
06/26/2003 - 11:43 a.m.
I've been hearing an awful lot about Chant� Mallard recently. She's the woman who hit a guy with her car who got stuck in her windshield and died when she drove the car into her garage and left it (and him) there. For two or three days. Actually, I've also seen reports that he was only in there for two or three hours before dying, so I'm not sure how long he was there. Not sure it matters, now that I think about it.
On the way into work this morning, I was listening to some local talk radio, as I am wont to do when I start to feel too good about my fellow man and want to be reminded just exactly what a foolish and ignorant society we live in, and the discussion was on capital punishment.
Our esteemed governor is proposing bringing back the death penalty in our state, which is something the people have voted on approvingly in numerous referenda. The governor wants to put some stipulations on the people to whom the death penalty can be applied, who are, according to the radio host, 'terrorists,' 'people who kill policemen,' and 'those who commit murder with extreme atrocity.'
I'm not completely sure what 'extreme atrocity' means, but I'm sure it's nothing good, and might even be the kind of thing that ole Chant� done did. I mean, leaving a badly wounded guy stuck in a windshield in a locked garage for a few days until he dies seems pretty dang atrocious.
The radio host was asking callers whether they are for the death penalty or against it. The best call I heard was from a woman who feels that 'life is sacred,' which is why she was always against the death penalty until the evfents of September 11, 2001, or nine-eleven as the kids are calling it these days. Then, she realized, that there are some people who may actually be deserving of punishment.
Oddly enough, though, she felt that Chant� Mallard was not one of those people, because her crime didn't involve any premeditation, and she didn't intend to kill anyone, let alone the fellow she did kill.
Now, I'm not sure how I feel about the death penalty. I'm fairly sure it doesn't do much as a deterrent, and I'm totally sure that I don't want someone who isn't guilty to be killed for something they didn't do, but there are some people in this world that I don't think should be in it anymore. Idi Amin. Ed Kemper. And maybe Chant� Mallard.
Here's why.
Chant� Mallard is (or more likely was) a nurse's aide. She was high on Ecstasy (and also apparently pot and booze) and driving. She hit a man so hard that his head and shoulders were driven through her windshield, where he was stuck. She drove home and put the car in the garage, apologized to the man, and left him there. To die.
I can hear you now. I hear you loud and clear. "But Red, she was afraid, she panicked, she didn't know what to do."
Yep, that's what her lawyer says too. Here's a quote:
"She is not the monster that police and prosecutors are making her out to be," said Mike Heiskell, Mallard's attorney. "She was simply a frightened, emotionally distraught young woman who had an accident, panicked and made a wrong choice." http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/642688/postsI'll buy that, for about 10 minutes. At the end of 10 minutes, anyone (let alone an effing nurse's aide - in other words, a medically trained person) would have realized that the man was still alive, and needed to be taken to the hospital.
But that didn't happen.
It didn't even happen after she showed the man to her friends, who told her to call 911. According to this report, her friend says
Mallard was hysterical and "was blabbing, 'Lord, I'm sorry. What do I do? Lord, I'm sorry. It was an accident. What do I do?'"Now Chant� doesn't have any excuse. She asked someone what to do, that person told her what she already should have known, and she still didn't do it.
So has Chant� brought a new form of crime into our midst? Not malice aforethought, not premeditation, but postmediatation. Her lawyer(s) want us and the jury to believe that the death of Gregory Biggs was an accident.
I'll give them the following points:
♦ She was allegedly high on various drugs and driving.
Stupid, but here the Cheat have a trophy, you get a pass on this one.
♦ She didn't know Gregory Biggs from a giant robot, and didn't intend to kill him or anybody.
Absolutely. No question.
♦ She panicked in a pretty horrific situation.
Again, no question. A guy hanging upside down through my windshield would probably freak me out a bit too.
So, getting Mr Biggs stuck in her windshield was an accident. It is what happened next that was no accident.
It's not like she didn't know what had happened, or what was going to happen if she left things the way they were. She did know, so well that she kept going into the garage to effing apologize to the guy. Sadly, she couldn't get it together enough to actually do anything about it.
So Gregory Biggs hung upside down for some unclear period of time, two hours, two days, dripping blood into her car, until he died. If she hadn't known he was there, that would have been an accident.
But she did know.
And she didn't do anything about it.
That's just not the way Elvis would have wanted it.
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