Hours after being convicted of murder for hitting a homeless man with her car and leaving him stuck in her windshield to die, Chante Jawan Mallard tearfully told a jury she was too "scared," "ashamed" and "out of control" on Ecstasy to seek help for the dying man.

"I have ruined lives of other people, I have ruined my family's lives, and I have put people through pain, and I am truly sorry," said Mallard, sobbing.

Mallard's lawyer, Jeff Kearney, paused his gentle questioning while his client sat trembling with her hands clasped, her breath reverberating throughout the hushed, still courtroom.

Mallard's wrenching testimony Thursday, a bid for a light sentence, came during the penalty phase of her Tarrant County, Texas, trial.

The jury can sentence Mallard, 27, to between five and 99 years in prison. Because Mallard has no prior convictions, her lawyer could also ask for probation, but Mallard herself told the jury that she thought prison was best.

Victim Gregory Biggs

"You think you need to be punished for what you did?" asked Jeff Kearney, Mallard's lawyer.

"Yes, sir, I do feel like I do need to be punished," replied Mallard.

"Do you feel like you need to go to the penitentiary?" returned the lawyer.

"Yes, sir," said Mallard. 

On Thursday morning, jurors took less than 60 minutes to find Mallard guilty of murder and failure to render aid to Gregory Biggs, 37, for the Oct. 26, 2001, collision.

The former nurse's aide took the stand late Thursday afternoon and remained there into the evening, detailing the accident, the aftermath and her eventual arrest.

After a night of clubbing, Mallard headed home in her 1997 Chevrolet Cavalier, the Ecstasy still in her system. 

"As I was going around the curve, I hit Mr. Biggs," she recalled through tears.  "When I hit him, there was a real loud noise and all this glass started flying in the car followed by a lot of wind, and the glass was just cutting in my skin. It was stinging me."

Mallard told the jury how she pulled off at an exit to survey the damage.

"He was on the floor, like underneath the dashboard," she said, with "one leg somewhat out the front glass, from like the crease of maybe the knee down."

She examined Biggs' body.  "I seen the man's leg I touched his leg for one quick second.  I started panicking even more and I started screaming and I just sort of cried and I just started yelling," said Mallard. 

With her windshield shattered, a dying man stuck in her car and her arm bloodied by debris, the former nurse's aide decided to drive home. 

"I didn't know what to think. I was scared and I didn't know what to do," she recalled. "And I was asking God to tell me what to do."

Mallard's lawyer focused on her drug habits in an attempt to portray her as a woman whose life had hit rock bottom, but who could be rehabilitated.

A habitual marijuana smoker, Mallard told the jury that she even smoked while caring for patients and would defeat urine tests at "about half" of the 13 health care jobs she held by smuggling in someone else's urine or adding bleach to the sample.

Often tearful during questioning by her lawyer, Mallard remained stoic under the prosecutor's rigorous examination. Prosecutor Richard Alpert pressed Mallard on areas her lawyer had largely glossed over.

In Mallard's first statement to police, she said she returned to the garage the night of the collision to apologize to Biggs.  But on the stand, she denied ever returning to the garage.

"Did you know he wasn't going to get any help in your garage?" asked Alpert.

"I didn't know what to do. I didn't think about that at the time," said Mallard.

When Mallard did make a call for help, it was to her friend Titilisee Fry, not the 911 operator. But when Fry arrived, Mallard testified, the friend cautioned against a call to police for fear of being implicated in the drugs.

Mallard's testimony followed that of more than a dozen supporting witnesses, including her mother, father, brother, members of her church and former co-workers. Together, the character witnesses painted Mallard's upbringing as influenced by a caring, supportive and close-knit group of family and friends. 

When she left the protective grasp of that group, said Mallard, "everything went wrong in my life, everything just went wrong."

Court TV is broadcasting Mallard's trial live.