Nerf-Coated World

Failure to stop and render aid, my foot

You remember this story -- the Fort Worth nurse's aide who hit a homeless guy with her car on her way back from a party, and then left him alive, his body halfway inside her car, begging to be taken to a hospital, she refusing, instead closing the garage door behind the car and leaving him there for a day until he died, and then dumping his body in a local park to hide the fact? She's getting life.

What amuses me -- only in a sick kind of way that sadly acknowledges how devoid some people are of any moral sense or ethics -- is the defense her legal team whipped up:

Mallard's legal team never disputed that she killed Biggs. But they said the death was an accident — not murder.

"Find her guilty of what she's really guilty of, failure to stop and render aid," defense attorney Jeff Kearney said.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we all agree that it was an accident that my client hit this man with her car; are you going to convict her of murder, for an act that was totally unintentional? It could have happened to any one of us. She was scared. She didn't know what to do. We've all been there, ladies and gentlemen. We've all been in situations, in circumstances that we didn't ask for, by a design not of our own choosing. I hope you will not take this woman's life away because of the unfortunate situation handed to her on that October night. We're not asking you to say she did nothing wrong. We all agree that she should have stopped and helped this man. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm asking you today to do the right thing. Do the right thing and convict this lady -- a lady, I might add, who had no criminal record before this unfortunate event -- of the thing she's really guilty of: failure to stop and render aid. Send a clear message to the people of this city that that kind of behavior will not be tolerated. But don't take this woman's life away. One life was already lost in this unfortunate set of events; there's no need to take another, ladies and gentlemen. Convict my client of failing to stop and render aid, and show the people of this city, of this state, and of this country, that it is wrong and intolerable to fail to stop and render aid to someone in need.

...you know, instead of leaving the man's body in your car and then dumping it in a park.

Jerk.

Posted by Matt at June 26, 2003 6:00 PM