A Long Island woman facing manslaughter charges in the death of an elderly priest she hit while allegedly driving drunk will not be charged with murder, prosecutors said yesterday.
Karen Fisher, 42, was arrested in July after her minivan veered across a yellow line into oncoming traffic and struck Msgr. William Costello, 79, who was out for an early evening stroll in East Hampton.
The decision to abandon a murder charge came the same day that a Nassau County jury convicted a man of murder in the drunken-driving death of a limousine driver and a 7-year-old flower girl.
A spokesman for Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota said the burden of proving murder was much higher in the Fisher case.
Spokesman Robert Clifford said murder convictions in drunken-driving cases are rare, and said Martin Heidgen’s conviction in the limousine case was aided by video of the crash.
A reconstruction of the accident that killed Costello also convinced Spota not to seek a murder charge.
Fisher was initially held on charges of driving while intoxicated, driving with a suspended license and leaving the scene of an accident.
The suspended license charge stems from a DWI arrest on April 1 in which Fisher’s blood-alcohol level was 0.31. Her blood-alcohol level in the July 18 accident allegedly was 0.28. The legal limit in New York is 0.08.
Fisher, who pleaded guilty to driving while impaired in 2003, is free on $750,000 bond.