A Texas woman who hit a man with her car, then left him impaled in her windshield was found guilty of murder Thursday after only one hour of jury deliberations.

Chante Jawan Mallard closed her eyes and cried after the verdict was read aloud by the Tarrant County, Texas, judge.

Jurors also found the former nurse's aide guilty of failing to render aid to Gregory Biggs for the Oct. 26, 2001, collision.

Mallard, 27, faces up to 99 years in prison when sentenced Thursday afternoon.

On Thursday morning, lawyers capped three days of testimony with dueling closing arguments portraying Mallard alternately as a murderer and as a mistaken — but not malicious — woman.

Victim Gregory Biggs

"Do something — do something — to send a message very clearly to her that this is not just failure to stop and render aid," prosecutor Richard Alpert urged jurors, holding aloft a smiling portrait of the victim, Gregory Biggs. "She stole his life, she stole his hope of anyone else saving his life. That's murder."

Mallard's attorney, Jeff Kearney, largely attacked the credibility of the state's case, returning to his central theme: However foolish, Mallard's actions simply did not amount to murder.

"There's no question in this case that Chante's failure to call for assistance probably caused his death," said Kearney. "But that's not murder, and that's what this case is really about."

Mallard's lawyer Jeff Kearney

The 12-person panel, chosen from eight men and six women, retired to the jury room to begin deliberations at about 11:40 ET.

Kearney's opening statement and closing argument acted largely as his case in this trial, bookending a brief one-witness defense consisting of a medical examiner from another county.  

The examiner agreed with the prosecution's medical examiner that Biggs, 37, might have survived if given medical attention, but contended that his death was more rapid than prosecutors have claimed.

Kearney also attacked the credibility of key prosecution witnesses, including a former friend of Mallard who claimed to have asked her to dial 911, and a man who has already pleaded guilty to helping Mallard dump the body in a nearby park.

Gone from Kearney's closing argument, however, was the emphasis on Mallard herself. In the attorney's opening statement, he stressed Mallard's drug-addled state and portrayed her as scared and confused when Biggs' body crashed through her windshield, sending glass shards into her face.

The night of the collision, Mallard had spent a night out drinking and allegedly taking Ecstasy with friends when she struck Biggs with her 1997 Chevrolet Cavalier.  With the victim lodged in her windshield, allegedly moaning with every bump, Mallard drove eight miles home, parked the car in her garage and went inside her house.

In his opening statement, Kearney had portrayed the collision as a "nightmare" for his client.

Prosecutor Christy Jack

Prosecutor Christy Jack returned Kearney's volley in her closing argument, recounting the last minutes Biggs spent lodged in Mallard's windshield, when "every breath he drew [was] more painful than the last."

"Merely inches away from him was a woman who held his life in the palm of her hands.  Inches away," said Jack. "It was dark. It was dark, when Chante Jawan Mallard closed the door and left him to die. For Greg Biggs, it was the darkest night ever."

In addition to a possible life sentence, Mallard already stands to serve a jail sentence of between two and 10 years after unexpectedly pleading guilty to a charge of evidence tampering the morning her trial began.

Court TV is broadcasting Mallard's trial live.