Jeanine F. Pirro, the high-octane host of a Fox News Channel show, was given a summons on Sunday for driving 119 miles per hour in upstate New York, according to the State Police.

Ms. Pirro, a former Westchester County district attorney who now hosts the Fox News television show “Justice with Judge Jeanine,” said in a statement that she was unaware that she was going nearly double the speed limit of 65 miles an hour.

“I had been driving for hours to visit my ailing 89-year-old mom and didn’t realize how fast I was driving,” she said in the statement through a Fox News spokeswoman. “I believe in the rule of law and I will pay the consequences.”

Ms. Pirro was pulled over at 1:15 p.m. on Route 17 in the town of Nichols, N.Y., in the Southern Tier, about 25 miles east of Elmira, where she grew up and where her mother still lives, according to news reports.