Nearly five years after getting indicted in a massive public corruption scheme, former Taylor Mayor Richard Sollars was sentenced to nearly six years in prison Tuesday for taking bribes from a businessman who showered him with perks galore: new hardwood floors for the politician’s two homes, a deck for his lake house, a $1,600 cigar humidor, cash and stainless steel appliances.
In exchange, the businessman got contracts with the city of Taylor with the help of the mayor, who years later would make a bizarre request of the judge who would oversee his criminal case: Sollars, who pleaded guilty to theft and bribery last year, asked whether he could serve his sentence in the very same home that he upgraded with the bribes.
“Mr. Sollars is at his core a good, decent and compassionate human being,” his attorney, Vincent Haisha, wrote in a sentencing memo that urged the judge to give Sollars home confinement instead of prison time. “This is not an insignificant penalty. … He is not a danger to society and he can repay his debt to society in a way that does not unnecessarily fill a prison bed for more time than is necessary to adequately deter others from like conduct.”…