Jackson Free Press

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — In a change of course, Former Mississippi Corrections Commissioner Christopher Epps pleaded guilty Wednesday to two counts in a federal corruption case.

Epps, 53, entered the new pleas before U.S. District Judge Henry T. Wingate in Jackson. A sentencing date is pending.

Epps previously had pleaded not guilty to charges that businessman Cecil McCrory gave him hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes starting in 2007. In exchange, prosecutors say, Epps steered prison contracts to companies McCrory owned or for which McCrory was a consultant.

McCrory, 62, pleaded not guilty in November and is scheduled for trial April 6.

Epps was commissioner for 12 years. He resigned the $132,700-a-year job Nov. 5, and federal prosecutors the next day released the indictment charging him and McCrory, who's a former state lawmaker.

The 49-count indictment was sealed in August and unsealed in November. It charged Epps with 35 felony counts and McCrory with 15 felony counts. Each faced charges including conspiracy, bribery and money laundering.

Epps worked for 32 years at the state Department of Corrections and was its longest-serving commissioner, with a dozen years in the position. He is a double rarity — an employee who started at the lowest rung and worked his way to the top, and an agency director who was chosen by and served under three governors: one Democrat and two Republicans, including current Gov. Phil Bryant.

After Epps pleaded guilty Wednesday, Bryant said in a news release that he appreciates prosecutors pursuing the case.

"I hope it serves as an example that there are consequences for public corruption," Bryant said.

McCrory served in the state House from 1988 to 1994 and has been a Rankin County justice court judge. He resigned Nov. 4 as president of the Rankin County School Board.

Epps is a native of the tiny Delta town of Tchula, and he earned his bachelor's degree in elementary education from Mississippi Valley State University. He started working in 1982 as guard at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman.

Epps was first appointed commissioner by Democratic Gov. Ronnie Musgrove in August 2002, and was kept on the job by the man who unseated Musgrove in 2003, Republican Haley Barbour. Epps served through both of Barbour's terms, and was kept by a second Republican governor, Phil Bryant, who was elected in 2011. Senators confirmed Epps for the job three times — in April 2003 under Musgrove, in May 2004 in the early months of the Barbour administration and in May 2012 in the early months of the Bryant administration.