Tulsa reserve deputy, 73, charged with manslaughter
A 73-year-old Oklahoma insurance executive serving as an unpaid volunteer sheriff’s deputy was charged with manslaughter Monday after officials accused him of negligence in the death of an unarmed suspect who had been shot with a gun instead of a Taser.
The victim, Eric Courtney Harris, 44, died during an undercover sting April 2 after he ran from Tulsa County sheriff’s deputies trying to arrest him on suspicion of selling guns and drugs.
Video released by the sheriff’s office showed that after a deputy tackled Harris in the street, Robert Charles Bates, a reserve deputy on the department’s violent crimes task force, shouted, “Taser!” – but instead shot Harris with a gun once, apparently by mistake.
The case also drew attention because of Bates’ political connections. He had chaired the 2012 re-election campaign for Tulsa County Sheriff Stanley Glanz and donated cars and other equipment to the department.
Over the weekend, the sheriff’s office, conducting its own investigation, strongly argued that Bates was innocent of any crime. But on Monday, after receiving the case late Friday, the Tulsa County district attorney’s office disagreed.
“Mr. Bates is charged with second-degree manslaughter involving culpable negligence,” Tulsa County District Attorney Stephen Kunzweiler said in a written statement. “Oklahoma law defines culpable negligence as ‘the omission to do something which a reasonably careful person would do, or the lack of the usual ordinary care and caution in the performance of an act usually and ordinarily exercised by a person under similar circumstances and conditions.’ ”
Bates could not be reached for comment Sunday or Monday. He previously told the Tulsa World newspaper that his attorney had advised him to not comment.
Although a mix-up involving a Taser and a handgun is unusual, it’s not unheard of.
In 2009, a transit officer claimed a similar mistake when he killed Oscar Grant III with a single gunshot in Oakland.
A prosecutor charged the transit officer, Johannes Mehserle, with intentional murder. A jury found him guilty of involuntary manslaughter, a charge indicating negligence. Mehserle was sentenced to two years in prison.
Bates had been a Tulsa city police officer for one year in the 1960s, and officials said he had been volunteering as a trained, part-time reserve for the department since 2008 and had been certified to use a Taser.
Those revelations drew criticism from Harris’ family this weekend when the Tulsa County sheriff’s office decided it would investigate the case itself rather than hand it off to another agency and recommended that Bates not face charges when the department referred the case to the district attorney’s office late Friday.