Mississippi ex-deputy seeks shorter sentence in racist torture of 2 Black men
JACKSON, Madam. — A former Mississippi sheriff’s deputy is seeking a shorter federal prison sentence for his role in the torture of two black mena case condemned by top US law enforcement officials, including Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Brett McAlpin is one of six white former police officers who pleaded guilty in 2023 to breaking into a home without a warrant and committing a hours long attack This included assault, repeated use of tasers and attacks with a sex toy, before one of the victims was shot in the mouth.
The officers were convicted in March and given prison sentences ranging from 10 to 40 years. McAlpin, who was a chief investigator for the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department, received about 27 years, the second-longest sentence.
The length of McAlpin’s sentence was “unreasonable” because he waited in his truck while other officers tortured Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker, McAlpin’s attorney, Theodore Cooperstein, wrote in his arguments filed Friday in the 5th U.S. Court of Appeals.
“Brett was drawn into the scene as events unfolded and spiraled out of control, but he maintained a peripheral distance while the other officers acted,” Cooperstein wrote. “Although Brett failed to stop things he knew were wrong, he did not give orders, initiate, or participate in the violent assault of the two victims.”
Prosecutors say the terror began on Jan. 24, 2023, when a white person called McAlpin and complained that two black men were staying with a white woman in the small town of Braxton, McAlpin told Deputy Christian Dedmon, who texted a group of white deputies who were so willing to use excessive force that they called themselves “The Goon Squad.”
In the gruesome details of the case, local residents saw echoes of Mississippi history. racist atrocities by people in authority. The difference this time is that those who abused their power paid a high price for their crimes, victims’ advocates said.
U.S. District Judge Tom Lee called the former officers’ actions “outrageous and despicable” and imposed sentences close to the highest federal guidelines for five of the six men who attacked Jenkins and Parker.
“The depravity of the crimes committed by these defendants cannot be overstated,” Garland said after the federal sentencing of the six former officers.
McAlpin, 53, is in a federal prison in West Virginia.
Cooperstein is asking the appeals court to overturn McAlpin’s sentence and order a district judge to impose a shorter sentence. Cooperstein wrote that “the collective weight of all the bad deeds of the night piled up in the memory and impressions of the court and the public, so that Brett McAlpin, who was sentenced last, bore the burden of all that the others had done.”
McAlpin apologized before his March 21 sentencing, but ignored the victims.
“This was all wrong, very wrong. This is not how people should treat each other and even worse, this is not how law enforcement should treat people,” McAlpin said. “I’m truly sorry that I was part of something that made law enforcement look so bad.”
Federal prosecutor Christopher Perras argued for a lengthy sentence, arguing McAlpin was not a member of the Goon Squad but “shaped the men into the villains they became.”
One of the victims, Parker, told investigators that McAlpin acted like a “mob boss” as he instructed officers throughout the evening. Prosecutors said other officers often tried to impress McAlpin, and an attorney for Daniel Opdyke, another officer, said his client saw McAlpin as a father figure.
The six former officers have also pleaded guilty to the charges in state court and are convicted in April.
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Associated Press editor Michael Goldberg contributed to this report.