Former Noxubee County Deputy Vance Phillips heads to the federal courthouse in Jackson, Miss., where he will be sentenced before Chief U.S. District Judge Daniel P. Jordan III, Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2024. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today

A former Noxubee County deputy will spend one day in prison after a federal judge said Tuesday that the jailed woman, who alleges the dputy sexually abused her 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. 

But pursuing federal charges in cases involving state jails or prisons is complicated by guidance issued by the Department of Justice in 2018, saying officers cannot be federally prosecuted for violating a person’s civil rights if the person “truly made a voluntary decision as to what she wanted to do with her body,” particularly if she received a benefit or special treatment in exchange for sex.

Andrea Armstrong, a law professor at Loyola University, said the Prison Rape Elimination Act standards “are clear: sex between an incarcerated person and a staff member is sexual abuse. Full stop. That’s because an incarcerated person is under the total control and authority of staff. Fully voluntary and free consent in such situations is impossible.”

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, Phillips 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  was “forced to give these people what they wanted in order to not receive any further punishment from them.”

She is “disgusted” at what all they made her do, she said. The abuse created “trust issues” in her relationship with her husband, and she has received therapy since leaving jail, she said. “Women and men are supposed to be protected while incarcerated and not taken advantage of.”

Phillips “knew exactly what he was doing and knew he could get away with it,” she said. “We rely on these people to keep us safe and protected.”

She said she prays that those who sexually abuse people behind bars will be held accountable and that victims “will use their voice and come forward” to help “stop the abuse that happens every day.”

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 the judge 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, after initially denying to an investigator that he forced 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.” 

UPDATE 8/7/24: This story has been updated to include a comment from a law professor and add to Reed’s victim impact statement.

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Mukta Joshi is an investigative reporting fellow at Mississippi Today through the 2024 Columbia Journalism School + INN Internship Program. . Mukta graduated with honors from Columbia Journalism School in 2024 as a fellow at the Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism, where her master’s thesis explored the growing South Asian influence on American politics. She is also a professional photojournalist, and her work has been published in TIME, Al Jazeera, WDR, New York Focus and Autostraddle.

One of her recent investigations, a combination of ground reporting, photojournalism and legal analysis, was selected by the Global Investigative Journalism Network as one of the eight best investigations from India in 2023.

Mukta is a 2019 graduate of the National Law School of India University, Bangalore. She began her career as a corporate lawyer and most recently, led the legal research vertical at Land Conflict Watch, investigating and writing about land governance, environmental law and forest policy in India

The stories of investigative reporter Jerry Mitchell have helped put four Klansmen and a serial killer behind bars. His stories have also helped free two people from death row, exposed injustices and corruption, prompting investigations and reforms as well as the firings of boards and officials. He is a Pulitzer Prize finalist, a longtime member of Investigative Reporters & Editors, and a winner of more than 30 other national awards, including a $500,000 MacArthur “genius” grant. After working for three decades for the statewide Clarion-Ledger, Mitchell left in 2019 and founded the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting.

Ilyssa Daly is a 2022 graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where she specialized in investigative reporting at the Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism. At Columbia, Ilyssa received honors from the Stabile Center and won the Fred M. Hechinger Journalism Education Award for her reporting on HIV preventative peer education programs in prisons throughout New York. She got her start in investigative journalism at Sarah Lawrence College, where she began leading investigations into 20+ year-old possible cases of wrongful conviction. There, she was a recipient of The Lori Hertzberg Prize for Creativity for her investigative work.