JACKSON, ma’am. — Sentencing ends Thursday with the last two of six white former Mississippi officers pleading guilty to breaking into a home without a warrant and torturing two black men, an act the judge called “egregious and despicable.”
Former deputy Brett McAlpin, 53, and former Richland police officer Joshua Hartfield, 32, will appear separately before U.S. District Judge Tom Lee. They face lengthy prison sentences for the attack, which involved beatings, repeated use of stun guns and attacks with a sex toy before one of the victims was shot in the mouth.
The judge on Wednesday sentenced Christian Dedmon, 29, to 40 years and Daniel Opdyke, 28, to 17.5 years. He handed down nearly 20 years Tuesday to Hunter Elward, 31, and 17.5 years to Jeffrey Middleton, 46. All but Hartfield served in the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department outside Mississippi’s capital, where some called themselves “The Goon Squad.”
In March 2023, months before federal prosecutors announced an indictment in August, an investigation by The Associated Press linked some deputies to at least four violent encounters with Black men since 2019 that left two dead and another with permanent injuries.
The officers created false charges against the victims, planted a gun and illegal drugs at the scene of their crime, and stuck to their cover story for months until they finally admitted to torturing Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker. Elward admitted to putting a gun in Jenkins’ mouth and shooting him in what federal prosecutors said was intended as a “mock execution.”
For each of the deputies convicted thus far, Lee has imposed prison sentences at the top of the sentencing guidelines.
The terror began on January 24, 2023, with a racist call for extrajudicial violence when a white man in Rankin County complained to McAlpin that two black men were staying with a white woman in a home in Braxton. McAlpin told Dedmon, who texted a group of white deputies asking if they were “available for a mission.”
“Not bad mug shots,” Dedmon texted — a green light, according to prosecutors, to use excessive force on parts of the body that wouldn’t appear in a booking photo.
Dedmon also brought along Hartfield, who was instructed to cover the back door of the property during their illegal entry.
Once inside, the officers mocked the victims with racial slurs and shocked them with stun guns. They handcuffed them and poured milk, alcohol and chocolate syrup on their faces. Dedmon and Opdyke attacked them with a sex toy. They forced them to undress and shower together to hide the mess, and Hartfield guarded the bathroom door to make sure the men couldn’t escape.
After Elward shot Jenkins in the mouth, lacerating his tongue and breaking his jaw, they came up with a cover-up. McAlpin pressured Parker to agree and asked him to keep his mouth shut in exchange for his freedom. The deputies agreed to plant drugs, and false charges against Jenkins and Parker stood for months.
McAlpin and Middleton, the oldest men in the group, threatened to kill the other officers if they spoke up.
Predominantly white Rankin County is located just east of Jackson and is home to one of the highest percentages of black residents of any major American city. The officers yelled at Jenkins and Parker to “stay out of Rankin County and go back to Jackson or ‘their side’ of the Pearl River,” according to court documents.
Opdyke was the first to admit what they did, his attorney Jeff Reynolds said Wednesday. On April 12, Opdyke showed investigators a WhatsApp text thread in which the officers discussed their plan and what happened. If he had thrown his phone into a river, as some other officers did, investigators might not have discovered the coded messages.
Attorneys for several deputies said their clients became enmeshed in a culture of corruption that was not only allowed but encouraged by leaders within the sheriff’s office.
Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey, who took office in 2012, revealed no details about his deputies’ actions when he announced they had been fired last June. After pleading guilty in August, Bailey said the officers had acted rogue and promised changes. Jenkins and Parker called for his resignation and filed a $400 million civil lawsuit against the department. Last November, Bailey was re-elected unopposed for a new four-year term.
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Michael Goldberg is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow him at @mikergoldberg.