Roller Madness

Chante Mallard's line is that drugs ruined her life and caused her to leave a homeless man to bleed to death lodged in her windshield. So, let's get this straight… half a roll of Ecstasy made her so callous and unsympathetic that she wouldn't render aid to a dying man. Something about that sound not-quite-right to anyone else?

Comments

[Anonymous]

Uh, I woulda fugured that in a bunch of libertarian there was somebody who had taken X.

I makes you love everybody, way worse than blow makes random rambles seem so important.

[Perry]

What a joke. Hopefully this lady gets jailed for life. If she was really rolling when she hit him, she'd have taken him to the hospital or something...

[Gil Grissom]

-- wasn't this the plot to a CSI? The one where the aspiring actor got hit by the car just like this, and my pre-title sequence line was: "he finally got his breakthrough".

[Cracker's boy.]

It was a hate crime.

[Anonymous]

"Most people who post at Reason are smarter than the average bear. I can't believe that you guys can't figure this one out."

Err, actually, I assumed that it was obvious enough that a sarcastic question would be enough on it's own, and everyone would get what was going on.

Oh, and I didn't get rid of the comments section on the site; it just goes down periodically.

[Anonymous]

"Uh, I woulda fugured that in a bunch of libertarian there was somebody who had taken X." sheesh, no credit for my lame necrophilia joke.

[Rod]

I've always found it fascinating that people continue to blame external events for their behaviour (not novel, just fascinating).

Point is, even if every bit of her assertion about the effect of the drugs and drink are completely true, they are also completely irrelevant.

People may be influenced by external factors, but that in no way should be allowed to abrogate being held fully responsible for any of their actions.

[Anonymous]

I was drunk and high, can i go home now?

[Hal E.]

Mallard claims she's not responsible for her actions because she was high, but who was responsible for her getting high? Seems to me that that was her choice. So if she's responsible for taking drugs, then she's got to be responsible for the actions "caused" by the drugs. If I pull the trigger on a gun, I'm responsible for the bullet that comes shooting out.

[joe]

I think she was presenting her intoxication as a mitigating factor, not a reason for acquittal. Don't you think she would have deserved a more serious punishment if she had been stone sober, instead of having her judgement impaired?

She's still guilty, but there are reasons that sentencing guidelines have ranges.

[Jimmy Antley]

Joe, you're an idiot.

I had to get that off my chest, as I have not seen a logical and non-whiny post from you yet.

Surprise me sometime.

You are the Stephen Platzer of HitAndRun.
(Check out opinionjournal.com sometime to see what I mean.)

[Warren]

It's just more noise. Like "Refer Madness", and now three generations later people still believe it. That this woman makes this claim and that it is reported are symptoms of a bigger problem, i.e. that most people believe it.

[Rod]

It shouldn't mitigate at all. She wasn't forced to become intoxicated, she wasn't forced to drive in that condition, and she wasn't forced to try to cover up the incident.

Sentencing guidelines allow some scope, but that scope primarily falls to intent, etc. And while she may not have intended to hit the victim, she did, by all accounts, intend to become intoxicated and, after becoming intoxicated, she did intend to drive in that condition. If she were sober, or let someone else drive, the incident may not have occurred at all.

If something is done by choice, and the results of that choice lead to some unfortunate result, the full responsibility of the result is tied inextricably to the choices that were made. For someone to state that their choice to become impaired should mitigate an action made while impaired is dishonest.

[DamStrait]

"No, liberals have always argued that people's actions are influenced by external factors, and that focusing entirely on individual choices is not sufficient in understanding why those behaviors occurred."

sorry, bud, but nobody cares to "understand why." She ran over a guy while drunk/drugged, parked her car in a garage and let the guy die. Who cares if she was abused as a child or whatever? Guilty Guilty Guilty.
If people weren't so busy trying to "understand why", we'd already be smelling the electric scent of long pork frying.

[Plutarck]

Isn't ectasy suppose to make you generally more sort of lovy-dovy empathatic and caring - to just about absolutely fricking anyone? I recall the story that the person who supposedly named it originally thought it would best be named "Empathy", but then remarked "But how many people actually know what 'empathy' means?"

However, I am undecided on whether or not murder should apply. Humans are choice machines, not hovering spirits who have perfect information, are not subject to time, energy, emotional, or intellectual constraints. Just as with any other machine, no matter how highly complex, "garbage in, garbage out", and if you put too much stress on a machine it will simply stop working properly - even when it otherwise works perfectly well. As such I _tend_ to prefer something which isn't precisely murder...but then again I find the whole legal system to be so thoroughly fucked up and generally unreasonable, unreliable, and unwieldy that I'm not much a fan of anything that occurs in or around it.

[quaker120]

I heard that story. I thought the joke was on NPR because I'd heard that the Hipster Handbook was a spoof meant to mock hipsters, not celebrate them. But I guess it isn't a put-on.

God, what's more pathetic than something that comes off as satire but isn't?

[twistedmerkin]

But didn't she have sex instead of calling the police? That sounds about right.

[quaker120]

Oops. That comments was meant for the Hipster Handbook thread. Sorry.

[Anonymous]

Quoted from the link:

"Mallard also said have done things differently that night if she had not taken ecstasy, Mallard said."

Huh? Was the reporter on drugs when they wrote this sentence?

[Michael Savage]

Are you people through slandering me yet? (Although I will admit to enjoying the king-fu grip thing).

Oh, sorry, this is for the Michael Savage thread.

[Anonymous]

at least she didn't react the way i do to X, otherwise she'd be charged with necrophelia.

[Skwag]

What a crock...if half an e was enough to make a person totally lose their sense of right and wrong, I've been getting ripped off.

Throw away the key (and slap the sh** out of her a few times for trying to evade responsibility by blaming it all on the drug).

[Brad S]

Most people who post at Reason are smarter than the average bear. I can't believe that you guys can't figure this one out. This is an obvious legal maneuver on Mallard's part, and I'm sure she was coached by her legal counsel to say that. It's very similar to the insanity defense that is so often used (and abused) in murder cases these days. The argument (which more often than not is fallacious) is simply that something else was controlling the person when he/she did that heinous act, therefore, he/she cannot be held responsible. Liberals seem to buy that argument, since most Liberals don't believe in personal responsibility for any actions.

[Dakota Loomis]

"Liberals seem to buy that argument, since most Liberals don't believe in personal responsibility for any actions."

Yeah. Pointless ad hominem attacks. YEAH. It was even a twofer, insulting Libertarians for agreeing with Liberals and calling Liberals waffling puss bags.

Though remember, it's not Brad's fault he can't think straight. I'm sure someone molested, abused, failed to love him when he was little.

Ad hominem begets ad hominem.

[Anonymous]

why'd you get rid of the comments section on your site julian?

[Anonymous]

"why'd you get rid of the comments section on your site julian?"

more crushing of dissent!

[Brad S]

Dakota - Liberals have always argued that people are not responsible for their actions. I don't mean that as a slam on Liberals, but it is true.

Overweight? It's not your fault, it's the fault of fast food companies.

Have health problems related to smoking? It's not your fault, it's big tobacco's fault.

Steal something? It's not your fault, your socio-economic upbringing is to blame.

Murder someone? It's not your fault, you were "insane", acting under the control of some clinical disorder at the time.

These are all arguments that I've seen put forth with a straight face by Liberals.

The common solution for Liberals, then, is some government program that takes responsiblity out of people's hands. Ban fast food. Ban tobacco. Implement a welfare state such that no one is a "victim" of a poor socio-economic background.

My intent is not to personally attack anyone. I'm simply pointing out what I believe to be a fallacy inherent in the Liberal view of the world - the notion that anything that happens to you is the fault of some external factor.

[O'Reilly's Karma]

"Mallard admitted to drinking several mixed drinks of gin and orange juice..."

No need to make this an illicit drug use thing only when alcohol is just as much to blame. The illicit drug use is obviously some kind of tricky defense to focus responisibility on illicit drugs than on her.

For this, I say double the sentence and disbar the lawyer.

[James]

Brad S,
Your points seem to fit the common slick lawyer more than a liberal. But who is a liberal to disagree when they have a slick lawyer to push their agenda!

[David 2]

Sounds too much like she's doing a commercial for the ONDCP. I can see the feds using this case as the latest bloody shirt to wave about as they go Gestapo on underground parties with their new RAVE law.

[joe]

"Liberals have always argued that people are not responsible for their actions." No, liberals have always argued that people's actions are influenced by external factors, and that focusing entirely on individual choices is not sufficient in understanding why those behaviors occurred. That's the principled position anyway; obtuse or exploitative people have been known to ignore the nuances was critiquing this position, or using it as an excuse for something, but that is a distortion of the actual liberal position.

[Tommy_Grand]

If her lawyer was really "slick," she would have negotiated a plea. The jury only deliberated for 45 mins. No one was bamboozled by the "high-on-drugs" argument.

[Jough]

That story is missing some important parts. The body was removed at least 6 hours after the "accident". Even if you buy into a pathetic "she couldn't help herself" argument (which I doubt few people believe - even liberals), was Mallard still under the influence of ecstacy at that time? Surely the pot and booze was pretty much worn off - talk about a buzz kill!

From Yahoo news:

>
Biggs' battered body was found in a park the day after he was hit. Mallard's friend Clete Deneal Jackson testified that she 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, nine.

Authorities had no leads in Biggs' death until four months later, when one of Mallard's acquaintances called police and said Mallard 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.
>

[Fred App]

"Liberals have always argued that people are not responsible for their actions." So have conservatives, except they blame it all on government regulation, the liberal media elite, and Bill Clinton's sex life.

Oh, yeah ... and the French.

Look, why make this a political point when it's clearly a societal point. People in general refuse to take responsibility for their actions. That's how politicians, actors, athletes, CEOs (and so on) get away with saying things like "mistakes were made" instead of the more direct and accurate, "I messed up."

[Mo]

It's funny, I was at a party where there were quite a few people on E. Someone, that none of my friends knew, sank in the spa. One of my friends, who was high on a couple pills of E, went down and also a doctor, pulled the guy out and gave him CPR.

I hate how people use drugs to absolve themselves of their own idiotic behavior. My experience w/ drug use is that they're overrated (in both negative and positive effects) and people use them to cover up their own failings.

Losers.

[Smoker Jeanene]

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DATE: 01/21/2004 05:29:49
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[Leopold Anastasia]

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