Woman Faces 2 Years in Prison for Tossing a Cup Into a Car

Jessica Hall is a 25-year old mother of three, and her husband is serving his third tour in Iraq. Last July, she was on the way to New York with her sister for a family party, following her father’s truck on a busy highway. And then a simple "road rage" incident happened that may land her in prison for up to two years.

Hall was driving north on Interstate 95 with her sister, who was six months pregnant and experiencing early contractions. They were trying to keep up with her father, whose truck was ahead of them on the highway, when traffic slowed to a crawl. A car cut her off, but she managed to get around it and settle back in behind her father. But then the same car cut her off again.

Angry at the other driver’s obnoxiousness, Hall swerved around the car and as she passed it, she threw a cup of ice into the open window of the driver’s side. The cup flew across the driver, Pete Ballin, and landed on his girlfriend, Eliza Fowle. Ballin, 36, and Fowle, 28, were heading north to Washington, D.C. after visiting relatives in North Carolina.

"It was gross and sticky and got all over me and the front of our car, the dashboard and even the windshield," Fowle told reporters about the drink that had been tossed into the car. The couple called police, and Hall was arrested and charged with "maliciously throwing a missile into an occupied vehicle." The charge is a felony in Virginia, where the incident occurred.

When giving instructions to the jury in Stafford County, VA, the prosecutor told them that any object propelled by force can be considered a missile, even if it is just a McDonald’s cup filled with ice. This week the jury convicted Hall of the charge against her and gave her the minimum sentence of 2 years in prison. The judge will impose a formal sentence on Wednesday, and he may decrease the length. Hall, whose trial has become referred to as the "McMissile case," has already spent more than a month in jail.

In an interview at the Rappahannock Regional Jail, Hall told a Washington Post reporter that she was still in shock from the charges against her. "We didn’t think it would go this far," she said. "Two years! What did I do?"

Although Fowle says she doesn’t regret reporting Hall’s actions to the police, she told reporters that even she and Ballin were shocked by Hall’s conviction. "I think that this is way too much of a punishment for her actions. This is just to me absolutely ridiculous," Fowle said, adding that a more logical sentence would have been community service.

George Elsasser, the Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney prosecuting Hall, said in court that if Ballin had been hit by the drink, he might have gotten into a serious accident and people might have been injured.

Hall said that although she knows what she did was wrong, she never thought she would end up in jail for the first time in her life. "I must have been wrong," she said. "But seriously…lesson learned. Lesson learned is one hour in this place."