JACKSON, ma’am. — Sentencing continues Wednesday for white former law enforcement officers in Mississippi who pleaded guilty last year to breaking into a home without a warrant and torturing two black men with a stun gun, a sex toy and other objects.
Daniel Opdyke, 28, and Christian Dedmon, 29, will appear separately before U.S. District Judge Tom Lee. They risk long prison sentences.
On Tuesday, Lee sentenced 31-year-old Hunter Elward to nearly 20 years in prison and 46-year-old Jeffrey Middleton to 17.5 years. They, like Opdyke and Dedmon, worked as Rankin County sheriff’s deputies during the attack.
Another former deputy, Brett McAlpin, 53, and a former Richland police officer, Joshua Hartfield, 32, will be sentenced Thursday.
The former officers admitted months ago to torturing Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker. Elward admitted to putting a gun in Jenkins’ mouth and firing in a “mock execution” that went wrong.
In a statement Tuesday, Attorney General Merrick Garland condemned the “heinous attack on civilians they swore under oath to protect.”
Before sentencing Elward and Middleton, Lee called their actions “egregious and despicable.”
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 at a home in Braxton. McAlpin told Dedmon, who texted a group of white deputies so willing to use excessive force that they called themselves “The Goon Squad.”
Once inside, they handcuffed Jenkins and his friend Parker and poured milk, alcohol and chocolate syrup on their faces. They forced them to undress and shower together to hide the mess. They mocked the victims with racist comments and shocked them with stun guns. Dedmon attacked them with a sex toy.
After Elward shot Jenkins in the mouth, they came up with a cover-up that included planting drugs and a gun. There were false charges against Jenkins and Parker for months. Jenkins suffered a torn tongue and a broken jaw.
Predominantly white Rankin County is located just east of the state capital, Jackson, and is home to one of the highest percentages of black residents of any major American city.
The officers warned Jenkins and Parker to “stay out of Rankin County and return to Jackson or ‘their side’ of the Pearl River,” court documents say, referring to an area with higher concentrations of black residents.
Dedmon will also be sentenced for starring in an attack on a white man that occurred before Jenkins and Parker were tortured. On Tuesday, prosecutors for the first time identified the victim as Alan Schmidt and read a statement from him detailing what happened to him on Dec. 4, 2022.
During a traffic stop that evening, Schmidt said Rankin County deputies accused him of possessing stolen property. They handcuffed him, pulled him out of his car and beat him until he “started seeing spots.” Dedmon fired his gun into the air and forced Schmidt to his knees, the affidavit said.
Dedmon pushed a gun to Schmidt’s temple and tried to put his genitals in the man’s mouth as Elward watched, and Dedmon grabbed Schmidt’s genitals during the ordeal as the man screamed, Schmidt said. The attack only stopped when officers took Schmidt to jail.
“What sick person does this? He already has so much power over us, so to act this way he must be really sick in the head,” Schmidt wrote in his statement.
Last March, months before federal prosecutors announced charges in August, an investigation by The Associated Press linked some of the deputies to at least four violent encounters with Black men since 2019 that left two dead and another with lasting injuries.
Elward and Middlelton were emotional as they apologized in court. Elward’s attorney, Joe Hollomon, said his client first witnessed Rankin County officers turning a blind eye to misconduct in 2017.
“Hunter (Elward) was initiated into a culture of corruption at the Rankin County Sheriff’s Office,” Hollomon said.
For months, Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey, whose deputies committed the crimes, said little about the episode. After the officers pleaded guilty in August, Bailey said the officers had been rogue and vowed to change the department. Jenkins and Parker have demanded his resignation and filed a $400 million civil lawsuit against the department.
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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.