Despite Monty’s argument that it could have been panic, this reportdoesn’t look good for the bishop.
So according to this account, she drove by the scene she had already fled, the police where there and again, she didn’t stop.
The cyclist chased her down, she went into her gated community and must have figured out that the game was up. She does return, but it’s 45 minutes later.
My WAG is that it’s not a DUI or the police would have already charged her with that. However, if the 45-minute timing is right, the fact that she had not stopped the second time, went back to her home first and then returned only after she had been tracked down doesn’t look good.
One way of taking advantage of the sacrament would be to hand one’s driver’s license to a bystander, say “This is horrible, I need a drink,” then flee to the church and guzzle down an uncertain quantity of sacramental wine, and then return to the scene and claim that the inebriation only took place after the incident.
What I did was simply point out that jumping to conclusions is not the way to go. I pointed out that one possibility is that the woman panicked. I pointed out that panic is one of the things that her actions could have indicated. Did you not see where I pointed out that the panic reaction does not automatically indicate she was driving impaired?
Did you and Misc. not see where I said that it’s wrong to leave the scene, where I said it’s wrong to drive while impaired?
p.s. If she was not at fault for the initial incident (the collision with the bike rider), was sober at the time, and had not left the scene, she likely could have been vindicated by the accident investigation. What she did though–leaving the scene of a fatal accident–is, of course, a crime. Doesn’t mean she was drunk when she did it. Panic, not to mention stupidity, could very well have been the reason for the flight.
There’s two separate statuses at play. A bishop is an ordained position, like a priest. There is likely a mechanism for declaring a bishop is no longer a bishop, as a matter of ordained status (“defrocking”) but it would likely be very rarely done.
But there’s also the position of suffragan bishop within the hierarchy of the diocese. That is more akin to a type of employment rather than ordained status, and an occupant of that position can likely be removed much more easily than trying to remove their status as a bishop.
And you know this, exactly how? See, you are just making shit up and jumping to conclusions, the very same thing you are accusing Mr. Miskatonic of doing.
What’s more, it only took about five minutes of googling to get the basic information which undermines the minor point you keep trying to make, while cherry-picking the parts of the story that fit your narrative. Sloppy thinking.
I’m Episcopalian. She should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, regardless of her status as bishop. It is slightly better for her that she returned (be it after 20 minutes or 45) than that the police had to figure out who she was and come after her with handcuffs out, but only slightly.
Episcopal clergy can be defrocked (technically “deposed”), that is, fully removed from the priesthood, either by resignation or conviction in an ecclesiastical trial. It is not so under Episcopal canon law that “once a priest, always a priest.” I was involved in one such trial a few years ago, for an Episcopal priest who’d treated his parish’s checking account as his own personal piggy bank. He did not appear for the trial. A trial panel of three (one priest and two laypeople) recommended to the bishop that he be deposed, and the bishop accepted that recommendation. The priest could have appealed the deposition to an appellate panel under canon law, but chose not to.
Wow, Cook’s BAC in the first incident (not accident) was 0.27. That’s seriously shit-faced. She had also puked on herself, so it’s likely some of the alcohol she consumed never made into her bloodstream.
One of the reasons people would move to big cities was to escape the busybodies of small places. I’ve heard them described as “one mistake” towns, where you are defined by whatever mistake you may have made. “Well, you know Joan, the one who got knocked up?” When Joan is already a grandmother. Or Bob, the guy whose wife left him.
Thanks to magic of google, we can enjoy the notoriety of small towns anywhere we go.