Free furniture: In 2007, Carroll Fisher, former state insurance commissioner, started serving a 14-month prison term after he was caught depositing a $1,000 campaign contribution from his state campaign funds into his personal bank account when it was overdrawn in 2003. Fisher was reprimanded by the State Ethics Commission for soliciting office furniture from those he regulated. The governor said that Fisher could not keep more than $33,000 worth of furniture, artwork and kitchen equipment he had sought as "gifts to the state."
Carroll Fisher was then sentenced in 2009, in a bribery case, to six months in a private lock-down facility in Tulsa.
Oklahoma County District Judge Kenneth Watson spared Fisher, 69, from more time in state prison. Defense attorneys argued the former official already has been punished and humiliated enough.
"This is a man who has been very much humbled by what he’s experienced,” defense attorney Bob Wyatt said.
The prosecutor, Assistant Attorney General Joel-lyn McCormick, had asked that Fisher get seven more years in prison for his breach of the public trust.
The judge decided the punishment after Fisher pleaded no contest to accepting bribes. The bribery trial had been set to begin Feb. 23.
Fisher was ordered to report March 2, 2009 to the Riverside Intermediate Sanction Facility in Tulsa. He must pay for his stay. The judge said Fisher can participate there in a work-release program. Fisher will be on probation for four years and six months after his release and must complete 150 hours of community service. He also must pay $5,000 to the state Victims Compensation Fund.
The judge agreed Fisher’s future already had been ruined by his earlier felony conviction in a campaign-corruption case. After losing an appeal, Fisher spent about 14 months in prison in that case. The judge noted prison records show Fisher apparently suffered the embarrassment of his grandchildren seeing him imprisoned there.
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