Ottawa man judge calls ‘truly evil’ gets 14 years in prison for robbery

An Ottawa man was sentenced Thursday to 14 years in prison for robbing a woman in October. Dezzan Phillips will serve concurrent sentences for drugs and domestic battery.

You are truly evil. There is nothing that serves as a mitigating factor. Nothing.”

—  La Salle County Judge Cynthia M. Raccuglia

When offered a chance to speak at his sentencing in La Salle County Circuit Court, Phillips admitted that he had “anger issues” but that he wasn’t beyond rehabilitation.

“I know my past, and I will admit I have a past,” Phillips said, “but I also have a problem, and this is the first time in my 32 years that I admitted to myself I have a problem.”

But his statement also included how he was railroaded by the victim, police and prosecutors not only in this case but also in past cases, such as his previous manslaughter conviction for killing Nicholas Puyear of Peru during a bar fight Nov. 10, 2017, in La Salle.

Earlier this year, a jury convicted Phillips of robbery and domestic battery in connection with an October incident in Ottawa. Robbery, the controlling charge, is a Class 2 felony carrying an extended sentencing range of three to 14 years because of Phillips’ criminal history.

Prosecutors subsequently filed a petition to revoke Phillips’ probation on a previous drug conviction carrying up to seven years. Assistant La Salle County State’s Attorney Kelley Porter asked the judge to impose consecutive maximum sentences totaling 21 years.

Porter said Phillips’ criminal conduct has progressively become “more violent and more aggressive,” and Phillips repeatedly spurned attempts at rehabilitation.

“We tried over and over and over and over again,” Porter said. “Even though he’s been given opportunities to start a new life, he’s refused them.”

Porter added later, “Nobody is safe from the defendant.”

Judge Cynthia M. Raccuglia agreed and said she was “amazed” at Phillips’ insistence that he is the victim in this and other cases, although the judge declined to impose back-to-back sentences.

“You are truly evil,” Raccuglia said. “There is nothing that serves as a mitigating factor. Nothing.”

Phillips was charged with robbery and domestic battery after the victim who called Ottawa police said she’d checked in to the Super 8 Motel only to be awakened by Phillips, who acquired a key card from the desk clerk to confront her – an act depicted on video.

The camera also showed the victim appearing at the desk asking to use the phone and massaging the side of her face where Phillips had struck her.

“He hit me,” she could be heard telling the dispatcher, and, “he took my cellphone.”

Phillips’s case was further damaged by a pair of recorded calls that he placed from La Salle County Jail. In the recordings, Phillips could be heard telling his mother that the victim, who was within earshot, should write, sign and notarize a statement recanting the claims.