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[Episcopal News Service] A Baltimore judge June 4 postponed until September former Episcopal Diocese of Maryland Bishop Suffragan Heather Cook’s criminal trial.
Cook’s trial was scheduled to start that day in Baltimore City Circuit Court Judge Wanda Heard’s courtroom. She stands accused of 13 charges for allegedly causing the Dec. 27, 2014, car-bicycle accident in suburban Baltimore that killed bicyclist Thomas Palermo, a software engineer at Johns Hopkins Hospital who also built custom bike frames. She is charged with driving the car that struck Palermo while having nearly three times the legal limit of alcohol in her blood system, texting while driving and then leaving the scene of the accident.
David Irwin, Cook’s attorney, asked for the postponement, and Cook told the judge during a brief court appearance that she waived her right to a speedy trial, the Associated Press reported. The trial is now set for Sept. 9.
“We would hope that we could resolve the case without trial for everybody’s sake, most importantly the Palermo family’s sake,” Irwin told reporters outside the courthouse after the hearing. “To go through the trauma of a trial, my client certainly doesn’t want to have to put them through that.”
Irwin also said he had made the “earliest of plea considerations” but had spoken only “very, very briefly” with prosecutors on the matter, according to the Baltimore Sun.
On May 1 Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori announced that she and Cook had reached an agreement that deprived her of her status as an ordained person in The Episcopal Church and ended all ecclesiastical disciplinary matters pending against her. That announcement came on the same day that Maryland Bishop Eugene Sutton said he had accepted Cook’s resignation from her diocesan post.
Judge postpones start of Heather Cook s homicide trial
I think this is tragic. One would think that she would just plead guilty and be done.
Cook’s trial was scheduled to start that day in Baltimore City Circuit Court Judge Wanda Heard’s courtroom. She stands accused of 13 charges for allegedly causing the Dec. 27, 2014, car-bicycle accident in suburban Baltimore that killed bicyclist Thomas Palermo, a software engineer at Johns Hopkins Hospital who also built custom bike frames. She is charged with driving the car that struck Palermo while having nearly three times the legal limit of alcohol in her blood system, texting while driving and then leaving the scene of the accident.
David Irwin, Cook’s attorney, asked for the postponement, and Cook told the judge during a brief court appearance that she waived her right to a speedy trial, the Associated Press reported. The trial is now set for Sept. 9.
“We would hope that we could resolve the case without trial for everybody’s sake, most importantly the Palermo family’s sake,” Irwin told reporters outside the courthouse after the hearing. “To go through the trauma of a trial, my client certainly doesn’t want to have to put them through that.”
Irwin also said he had made the “earliest of plea considerations” but had spoken only “very, very briefly” with prosecutors on the matter, according to the Baltimore Sun.
On May 1 Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori announced that she and Cook had reached an agreement that deprived her of her status as an ordained person in The Episcopal Church and ended all ecclesiastical disciplinary matters pending against her. That announcement came on the same day that Maryland Bishop Eugene Sutton said he had accepted Cook’s resignation from her diocesan post.
Judge postpones start of Heather Cook s homicide trial
I think this is tragic. One would think that she would just plead guilty and be done.
