A former Noxubee County deputy will spend one day in prison after a federal judge said Tuesday that the jailed woman he had sex with for years “wasn’t really a victim.”
District Judge Daniel P. Jordan III also gave Vance Phillips a $2,500 fine and eight months’ home detention that will enable him to continue his job with the ambulance service, go to church and see a doctor if he needs to.
The judge described the inmate — who accused Phillips and others of sexual abuse in a lawsuit — as a willing participant who exchanged sexual favors for contraband.
In both Mississippi and federal prisons, it is a crime for an officer to bring in contraband. It is also a felony to have sex with any inmate. Under state law, a convicted officer faces up to five years in prison; under federal law, that maximum is 15 years.
District Attorney Scott Colom, whose office handles criminal cases in Noxubee County, chose to pass his 2020 investigation on to federal prosecutors because of worries about getting a fair jury in such a small county.
It would take two years for a grand jury to indict Phillips and former Sheriff Terry Grassaree.
Instead of being charged with a sex crime, he faced federal bribery charges. In this case, the bribes were exchanging sexual favors and photographs for bringing contraband, including tobacco and cellphones, into the Noxubee County Jail.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Kimberly Purdie said the jailed woman spent four years behind bars, from 2015 to 2019, for a homicide she didn’t commit and did what she had to do in order to survive. No officer was charged with bringing contraband into the jail, but she was.
In her victim impact statement read to the court, Elizabeth Layne Reed said she felt she had to give people what they wanted to avoid further punishment.
She said she was “heavily impacted” by what Phillips and his then-boss, Grassaree, did to her.
“I feel guilty for his family members who didn’t know what was going on, but I don’t feel guilty about Vance Phillips who knowingly did what he did,” she wrote. “Women and men are supposed to be protected while they are incarcerated.”
She said the abuse has created “trust issues” in her relationship with her husband.
She also said she prays that people who sexually abuse those behind bars are held accountable and that she hopes other victims “will use their voice and come forward” to help “stop the abuse that happens every day” behind bars.
Public Defender Princess Abby said Phillips was an officer who dreamed of becoming a state trooper. “Now that dream is out the window,” she said.
She argued for four months’ house detention, saying Phillips was an otherwise respected member of his community who played the drums for his church band and had no previous criminal history.
She said what happened was “outside his normal behavior” and that he is now married with three sons.
But Jordan noted that what happened was far from a one-time indiscretion. Instead, he said, Phillips had sex with the inmate for years.
He called what the then-deputy did “a considerable breach of public trust.”
But in sentencing Phillips, the judge also blamed the jailed woman and said, “It would be different if she was raped.”
In her 2020 lawsuit, Reed said that multiple deputies and Grassaree touched her sexually as well as demanded nude photographs from her contraband cellphone. Noxubee County settled that lawsuit for an undisclosed amount.
The judge noted that Phillips is currently working a 60-hour-week job and that he didn’t want to disturb that.
He said a stack of character letters said “glowing” things about Phillips, but he noted that many barely knew about the crime. One writer called the former deputy a “fall guy,” but Jordan said that wasn’t true because Phillips wasn’t the last deputy to have sex with the jailed woman.
Grassaree faces sentencing on Wednesday. He has already pleaded guilty to lying to an FBI agent on July 13, 2020, about making Reed take and share nude photos and videos in exchange for favorable treatment, which included making her a trusted inmate, also known as a trusty.
Jordan said the federal sentencing guidelines put Phillips’ prison time at between 8 and 14 months. The judge said the guidelines on Grassaree’s sentence are even less.
As Phillips walked out of the courtroom wearing a jeweled silver cross necklace, he told reporters, “I just want to thank God I’m not going to jail.”
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