Ex-Oklahoma Reserve Deputy Sentenced to 4 Years in Shooting Death

The victim was restrained and unarmed when he was shot

A former Oklahoma volunteer sheriff's deputy who said he mistook his handgun for his stun gun when he fatally shot an unarmed suspect last year was sentenced Tuesday to four years in prison.

A judge gave Robert Bates, 74, the maximum penalty recommended by jurors who last month convicted the wealthy insurance executive of second-degree manslaughter.

Bates fatally shot Eric Harris while working with Tulsa County sheriff's deputies last year during an illegal gun sales sting. Harris, who had run from deputies, was restrained and unarmed when he was shot.

The shooting, which was captured on video, sparked several investigations. Among other things, the investigations revealed an internal memo questioning Bates' qualifications as a volunteer deputy and showed that Bates, a close friend of the sheriff's, had donated thousands of dollars in cash, vehicles and equipment to the sheriff's office.

Bates' defense attorneys argued at trial that methamphetamine found in Harris' system, along with his cardiac health, caused his death. Defense attorneys called the killing an "excusable homicide."

But prosecutors told jurors that Bates was guilty of culpable negligence when he shot Harris. One deputy testified that Bates apparently dozed off minutes before Harris fled from deputies.

Following the shooting, an outside consultant hired to review the sheriff's office determined that the agency suffered from a "system-wide failure of leadership and supervision" and had been in a "perceptible decline" for more than a decade. The reserve deputy program was later suspended.

Weeks after Harris was killed, an internal sheriff's office memo from 2009 was released by an attorney for Harris' family that alleged superiors knew Bates didn't have enough training but pressured others to look the other way because of his relationship with the sheriff and the agency.

A grand jury also investigated the agency and indicted the longtime sheriff, Stanley Glanz, in September, accusing him of failing to release the 2009 memo. He resigned on Nov. 1.

The new sheriff, who was sworn into office last month, has detailed plans to reform and revive the reserve deputy program.

Glanz was among dozens of people who wrote letters of support for Bates ahead of Tuesday's sentencing. Glanz wrote that he didn't believe his longtime friend was "a threat or a danger to anyone and should not be placed in an overcrowded state prison system."

"This is a terrible injustice for a man that made a terrible mistake in a split second," Glanz wrote in the letter submitted to the court. 

Copyright AP - Associated Press
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