Jury to decide fate of woman accused of killing lawmen
LEBANON — Jurors will decide if accused murderer Fallon Tallent deliberately ran down two lawmen last year after a high-speed car chase that stretched across half the state.
Prosecutors closed their case Tuesday against Tallent, 22, who is charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of Wilson County Sheriff’s Deputy John Musice and Mount Juliet Police Sgt. Jerry Mundy. If convicted, she could be sentenced to life in prison.
“On that day out there, Fallon Tallent was like somebody holding two birds, two little birds in her hand,” District Attorney General Tommy Thompson said in closing remarks to the jury. “She had the opportunity to either turn them loose or squeeze the life out of them.”
Mundy was struck as he placed spike strips on Interstate 40 to puncture Tallent’s tires. Her vehicle then plowed into Musice.
Prosecutor Bobby Hibbett told jurors that Tallent’s actions on July 9, 2003, were premeditated because she fled from police and “had proposed to do anything — even kill — to get away.”
“When you decide to get away, even when you have to kill to get away, and you do kill, that is premeditated murder,” Hibbett said.
Hibbett outlined a series of choices Tallent made that he said shows she intended to kill whoever tried to stop her. He said the pattern began the previous March when, in a separate incident, Tallent fled from police and was stopped after she ran over a Stinger, or spike strip, laid across the road.
“The seeds of premeditation started March 15, 2003, when she was stopped by that Stinger,” Hibbett said. “She decided that she will never be stopped by a Stinger again.”
He urged jurors to find Tallent guilty of murder and said, “If you believe this is reckless homicide or criminally negligent homicide the state would ask you to acquit her, to walk her, to find her not guilty, to let her go.”
Defense attorney Craig Garrett said Tallent had a split-second to react when she saw Mundy on Interstate 40 deploying the spike strips, and swerved to the right to avoid the strips and keep going.
“There’s no evidence that she’s a murderer, that she intended to murder to get away,” Garrett told jurors.
The amount of time Tallent had to react was a point of contention Tuesday.
The defense’s expert on accident reconstruction, Tyler Kress, testified that at 100 to 120 mph, Tallent had three-quarters of a second to perceive what was happening when she first noticed Mundy in the road and another three-quarters of a second to decide how to react.
Kress said she swerved to the right because there was a concrete wall to the left. “I think her intent was to steer around” the spike strips and get away, he said.
The prosecution’s expert, Tennessee state trooper Allan Brenneis, said his calculation of Tallent’s time to perceive and react, based on the tire marks and other evidence, was a little more than four seconds.
Brenneis also testified that he thought Tallent intentionally ran down the lawmen.
Garrett acknowledged Tallent’s drug use and reckless behavior in fleeing from police. But he said, “You can be a drug addict and not be a murderer, you can be someone who runs from police and do it a hundred times and still not be a murderer.”
Earlier Tuesday, a physician who specializes in alcohol and drug addiction testified Tallent was “an accident waiting to happen” when she drove a stolen 1986 Mercedes into Mundy and Musice.
Dr. Murray Smith took the stand for the defense and said Tallent was on a crack cocaine binge when she began the car chase from police in Knoxville. Smith said Tallent’s judgment and muscle coordination were severely impaired by the crack and sleep deprivation.
On cross-examination, Thompson said Tallent showed her judgment was fine by traveling 162 miles from Knoxville at high speeds, zipping in and out of traffic and making a number of rational decisions during the chase to avoid being caught.
Clinical psychologist Sandra Phillips interviewed Tallent twice and testified for the prosecution that Tallent had “an abundant ability to premeditate and to act in an intentional manner.”
“It’s doubtful that she was hallucinating or experiencing any other distortions in judgment,” Phillips said.