A former Mississippi sheriff’s deputy will spend one day in prison after a federal judge said Tuesday that a jailed woman, who alleges the deputy sexually abused her for years, “wasn’t really a victim," Mississippi Today reports. District Judge Daniel P. Jordan III also gave the deputy, 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. 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.”
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. 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.”
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