[B]URLINGTON — A former corrections officer has pleaded guilty to working with an inmate housed at the Newport prison to smuggle buprenorphine hidden inside magic markers into the facility when he still worked there.
Grant Vance, 56, entered guilty pleas Monday in federal court in Burlington.
He is now set to be sentenced in July on two felony counts: conspiring with the inmate from Jan 1, 2018, through June 28, 2018, to distribute buprenorphine, a generic form of Suboxone, and possessing with intent to distribute buprenorphine, also known as bupe.
Each charge carries up a maximum of up to 20 years in prison.
However, Judge William K. Sessions III at the hearing Monday ordered that a presentence investigation be conducted prior to Vance’s sentencing hearing.
David McColgin, a public defender representing Vance, said in court Monday that he estimated that the federal sentencing guideline range for his client, who has no previous criminal record, was between zero and six months in prison.
Federal guidelines are advisory, but judges often refer to them when imposing a sentence.
Sessions asked Vance if any “promises” had been made to him regarding the actual sentence that might be handed down.
Vance replied that he had received no such promises.
Vance and the inmate, Gregory Paradis, 36, were indicted last fall by a federal grand jury following an investigation by the FBI into the smuggling of buprenorphine into the Northern State Correctional Facility in Newport.
The federal case against Paradis remains pending.
Buprenorphine is a drug used to treat opiate addiction, including by the state Department of Corrections inside Vermont’s prisons.
A new law went into effect last year aimed at making sure prisoners are screened quickly and treated for addiction by allowing more inmates access to buprenorphine or methadone treatment. The slow roll-out of that program drew criticism from prisoner advocates.
The Legislature is considering a bill, H.162, that would decriminalize buprenorphine possession under state law.
Earlier this month, the House Judiciary Committee approved the measure. The legislation still needs to pass the House, and if approved there, would move on to the Senate for consideration.
In the federal case against Vance and Paradis, investigators used a series of prison informants to unravel the smuggling scheme, and according to court records, confronted Vance and searched him and his vehicle as he showed up for work at the Newport facility.
That search, court records stated, resulted in authorities seizing a magic marker containing suspected buprenorphine.
Vance was placed on administrative leave the same day of the search, June 28, and he resigned his job on Aug. 11. He had worked for the department since 2003.
Paradis, was an inmate at the facility at the time, and he has convictions of several charges, including burglary, repeated counts of escaping from furlough, assault on a law enforcement officer, and theft, according to corrections officials.
Several inmates, referred to in court filings as confidential informants, alleged that Vance was smuggling in the drugs and providing them to Paradis, who would then use or distribute them to other inmates in the facility, court records stated.
According to Vance’s plea agreement, Vance had known Paradis for about 15 years.
The document stated that Paradis helped to arrange for people outside the Newport facility to acquire buprenorphine, and those people would mail it to a post office box used by Vance.
Postal records show that at least seven packages containing suspected buprenorphine were mailed to that post office box over several months, with those packages coming from Newport and Burlington as well as Holyoke and Springfield, Massachusetts, and Brooklyn, New York.
Vance “understood that a ‘strip’ of buprenorphine typically cost an inmate $250 to $300” inside the Newport prison, the plea agreement stated.
In one of the packages delivered to Vance’s post office box, a magic marker inside the parcel contained 61 buprenorphine strips, according to the document.
