Former Episcopal Church bishop Heather Cook, who ran over and killed a cyclist while she was texting and driving drunk, could be freed from prison as early as next month if an appeal succeeds.
Cook, formerly Bishop of Maryland, killed software engineer Thomas Palermo on December 27, 2014. He was 41 years old and married with two young children. Cook was sentenced to seven years in prison the following year.
However, she has asked for the prison time she serves on two of the charges for which she was convicted to be served concurrently rather than consecutively, according to the Baltimore Sun. That could reduce her prison time by two years, and as she has earned remission by participating in prison programmes she could be released on November 5 rather than next August.
She has previously sought early release. A request last year to serve the remainder of her time in home detention was refused.
Alisa Rock, Palermo's sister-in-law, told the Sun: 'Each of Cook's attempts to reduce her sentence traumatizes my sister and her family anew. It's maddening... This trauma will affect them all for the rest of their lives, and it's only appropriate that Heather Cook serve out her original sentence, not only for killing Tom, but for leaving him there, for abdicating responsibility for what she did.'
New Episcopal Church resolutions on 'leadership impairment' – unfitness for office due to alcohol and substance misuse and behavioral addictions, introduced in the wake of the Cook case – are to come into effect in January 2019.
