N.H. man banished from state for 3 years

Jeffrey Phillips had lived half his life in New Hampshire, but this week he was given a few hours by authorities to gather his belongings and then was sent across the border and told not to return for three years.

Phillips, 56, was banished from the Granite State for threatening the judge assigned to his divorce case. Tempers often flare in such cases, but prosecutors said yesterday that Phillips's threat to shoot the judge in the head, scribbled in a note, was an attack on "the very fabric of the constitutional system."

So, like Napoleon Bonaparte and other enemies of the state sent into exile before him, Phillips left his home in Kingston, N.H., journeying to Massachusetts on Thursday. He thought about settling close to the border to be near his teenage daughter. But he took one look and kept going.

"Northern Massachusetts is a very expensive place, unless you move to a less desirable place like Lawrence or Methuen," he said, talking on the phone yesterday from Providence, where he has landed for the time being.

Civil liberties lawyers said the sentence was unusual, and the prosecutor in the case agreed.

"This is an unusual condition of supervised release, but I think it was an appropriate condition, given the fact that the victim of the offense is a district court judge in New Hampshire," said Assistant US attorney Robert Kinsella.

Kinsella said he was not consulted about the sentence, which US Attorney Thomas P. Colantuono announced yesterday.

"I imagine the judge did it because he wanted to keep him away from the victim of this crime," he said. "The condition seems logical."

Phillips, an electronics engineer, said he is not a violent man. Anguished by his divorce, he said he had a momentary lapse in judgment.

While his divorce case was pending last June, Phillips mailed a note to Brentwood Family Court Judge Peter Hurd saying that he would be shot in the head if he failed to confess to some unspecified offenses, according to prosecutors. Phillips also mailed angry letters to the Kingston police and New Hampshire's Division of Children, Youth, and Families.

"I was very distraught over my marriage," he said. "I don't know if any human could withstand what I was going through. I've been disgraced. I feel ashamed for what I did."

In November, Phillips pleaded guilty to mailing a threat and was sentenced to the four months he spent behind bars awaiting trial. On Thursday, US Judge Steven J. McAuliffe sentenced him to three years of supervised release with the condition that he stay out of New Hampshire, though he can make periodic trips there with approval by his probation officer.

"They used the term banished ; I don't really understand it," said Phillips.

Boston defense lawyer Harvey Silverglate, a longtime member of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, said that while the sentencing is constitutional, it does not make much sense.

"It is not that uncommon to have a geographical restriction in probation conditions," Silverglate said, citing spousal abuse defendants being kept away from victims and pedophiles restricted from school zones. "But if this fellow got into a homicidal rage and decided he's going to go after somebody in New Hampshire, you don't think he's going to ask permission from his probation officers do you?"

Phillips has already turned his attention to his new life. He's staying with a friend in Providence and seeking work. He might soon rent an apartment. But his heart remains in New Hampshire.

"I have a daughter up there," he said. "I really hope I can visit her with out problems. I have a marriage in which there's a small chance it could be resurrected."

And then the optimism passed.

"Well, my wife might think otherwise," he said. "I still love my wife, and that whole thing is now in a shambles. What am I doing here?"

Mishra can be reached at rmishra@globe.com; Tench at mtench@globe.com.