Man gets 12 year sentence for sexual assault

A 28-year-old homeless man has been sentenced to 12 years in prison for sexually assaulting an acquaintance behind the North Little Rock police detectives bureau.

Sentencing papers filed last week show Phillip Lamont Layton pleaded guilty to second-degree sexual assault, reduced from rape, for the February 2022 attack on the 50-year-old woman in exchange for the sentence imposed by Pulaski County Circuit Judge LaTonya Honorable.

Under the conditions of his plea agreement, negotiated by deputy prosecutor Erin Stroman and defense attorney Lott Rolfe, a felony escape charge was dropped.

Layton came to the attention of investigators on Feb. 18, 2022, after police found the woman and a man, Matthew Terry, both homeless, behind the department’s criminal investigations division building at 615 W. 29th St.

Terry, bleeding from the face and head, told police he’d been beaten by a man he knew as “Phillip” while the woman said the same man had raped her there about 1 1/2 weeks earlier. Terry said

Phillip had beaten him when confronted about the woman’s accusations. Terry declined to press charges.

They were both talking about Layton, detectives determined, and he gave conflicting accounts of what had gone on between him and the woman.

He claimed the encounter was consensual then said, “she may not have wanted it,” court filings show.

Told he was being charged with rape, a Class Y felony that carries a potential life sentence, Layton broke the lock on the police interview room and got out of the building. He was later caught about three blocks away.

The woman told police she had been awakened in her tent by Layton choking her before he repeatedly raped and sodomized her, including with his hands.

She told investigators he had also smeared feces on her and eaten it.

Layton, who has not been in serious trouble with the law before, has been jailed ever since.

He was twice assessed at court order by state doctors, who reported he did not have a mental illness.