A fourth former deputy is sentenced to 40 years in prison for his role in the torture and sexual assault of black men

ACKSON, Miss. (AP) – A fourth former Mississippi sheriff’s deputy was sentenced Wednesday for his role in racist torture of two black men by a bunch of white officers who called themselves the “Goon Squad”, sentenced to 40 years in federal prison.

Christian Dedmon, 29, didn’t take a look at the victims as he apologized and said he would never forgive himself for the pain he had caused.

All six former officers charged in the case pleaded guilty last 12 months, admitting that they subjected Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker to quite a few acts of racist torture in January 2023 after a neighbor complained that the men were in the house with white woman. Prosecutors said Dedmon hit the men with a sex toy and threatened to brutalize them.

U.S. District Judge Tom Lee said Wednesday that Dedmon carried out the most “shocking, brutal and vicious attacks imaginable” on Jenkins and Parker and on a white man during a traffic stop weeks earlier.

Jenkins, who still has difficulty speaking due to his injuries, said in an announcement read by his lawyer that Dedmon’s behavior was the most depraved of those that attacked him.

“Deputy Dedmon is the worst example of a police officer in the United States,” Jenkins said. “Deputy Dedmon was the most aggressive, the sickest and the most vile.”

Hours before Dedmon was sentenced, former officer Daniel Opdyke, 28, cried profusely as he spoke before the judge announced his 17.5-year prison sentence. Turning to take a look at the two victims, Opdyke said the isolation behind bars gave him time to reflect on “how I turned into the monster I became that night.”

“The gravity of my actions and the harm I have caused will haunt me every day,” Opdyke told them. “I wish I could take away your suffering.”

Parker rested his head in his hands and closed his eyes, then stood and left the courtroom before Opdyke finished speaking. Jenkins said he was “heartbroken” and “ashamed” by the cruel actions committed against him.

The judge said Opdyke may not have been fully aware of what being a member of the Goon Squad meant when Lt. Jeffrey Middleton asked him to join, but he knew it involved the use of excessive force.

“You weren’t a passive observer,” Lee said. “You actively participated in this brutal attack.”

All six former officers pleaded guilty last 12 months to breaking right into a home with no warrant and torturing Black men with a stun gun, a sex toy and other objects.

On TuesdayLee sentenced Hunter Elward, 31, to nearly 20 years in prison and Middleton, 46, to 17.5 years in prison, calling their actions “outrageous and despicable.” Like Opdyke and Dedmon, they were working as Rankin County sheriff’s deputies at the time of the attack.

Another former police deputy, Brett McAlpin, 53, and former Richland police officer Joshua Hartfield, 32, will go on trial Thursday.

Last March, a couple of months before federal prosecutors announced the charges in August, an investigation by the Associated Press linked some deputies to at the very least 4 violent encounters with black men since 2019, which left two people dead and one with lasting injuries.

The former officers clung to their cover for months until they finally pleaded guilty that they tortured Michael Corey Jenkins and Parker. Elward admitted to putting a gun in Jenkins’ mouth and firing it as part of a “mock execution” that went fallacious.

In an announcement Tuesday, Attorney General Merrick Garland condemned the “heinous attack on the citizens they were sworn to protect.”

Featured Stories

The terror began on January 24, 2023, with a racist incitement to extrajudicial violence, when a white Rankin County resident complained to McAlpin that two black men were staying with a white woman in a house in Braxton. McAlpin told Dedmon texted a bunch of white deputies asking in the event that they were “available to participate in the mission.” “No bad mug shots,” he texted, which prosecutors say gives the green light to use excessive force on body parts that do not appear in the booking photo.

Once inside, they handcuffed Jenkins and his friend Parker and poured milk, alcohol and chocolate syrup in their faces. They forced them to strip naked and take a shower together to hide the mess. They taunted the victims with racist insults and shocked them with stun guns. Dedmon and Opdyke attacked them with a sex toy.

After Elward shot Jenkins in the mouth, splitting his tongue and breaking his jaw, they hatched a cover-up that included planting drugs and a gun. For months, false allegations were made against Jenkins and Parker.

Majority-white Rankin County lies east of the state capital, Jackson, and is home to one of the highest percentages of black residents of any major U.S. city. Officers yelled at Jenkins and Parker to “stay out of Rankin County and go back to Jackson or ‘their side’ of the Pearl River,” court documents say.

Opdyke was the first to admit what they did, his lawyer Jeff Reynolds said Wednesday. On April 12, he showed investigators a WhatsApp text thread in which officers discussed their plan and what happened. If he had thrown the phone into the river, as another officers did, investigators may not have discovered the encrypted messages.

Reynolds also said Opdyke experienced sexual assault as a baby and viewed older deputies as father figures. That made him susceptible to a culture of misconduct inside the Rankin County Sheriff’s Office, Reynolds said.

“When a new officer gets there, he starts indoctrinating people,” Reynolds said. “Where is the real leadership? Why aren’t they in this court?”

Dedmon, who planted drugs on Jenkins to frame him on false charges, said he was promoted to the position of drug investigator not despite his bad behavior, but because of it.

“It’s because instead of doing the right thing, I chose to do the wrong thing,” Dedmon said.

Dedmon, like Opdyke and Elward, also pleaded guilty to collaborating in the assault of a white man during a traffic stop on December 4, 2022 – weeks before Jenkins and Parker were tortured. On Tuesday, prosecutors released the victim’s identity as Alan Schmidt. Reynolds said Opdyke held Schmidt until Dedmon arrived but didn’t beat him or sexually assault him.

The Associated Press doesn’t typically name individuals who say they’ve been sexually assaulted unless they agree to be identified or come forward publicly.

Schmidt’s statement, which prosecutors read in court, shows that Dedmon accused him of possessing stolen property. Schmidt said he was handcuffed, taken out of the vehicle and beaten until he “started seeing spots.”

Prosecutors said Elward and Opdyke failed to intervene when Dedmon punched and kicked him, used a stun gun on him, fired a gun into the air while threatening him and then sexually assaulted him.

“What kind of sick person does that?” – Schmidt wrote in his statement.

Dedmon admitted firing the gun into the air to intimidate Schmidt but denied sexual assault. Prosecutors said they read details of the sexual assault into the court file when Dedmon pleaded guilty, and Dedmon said he agreed with the facts presented.

Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey, who took office in 2012 and was re-elected in November after nobody got here forward against him, has released no details about his deputies’ actions, announcing they were fired last June. After they he pleaded guilty in August, Bailey said officers had gone rogue and promised changes. Jenkins and Parker called on him to resign and contributed $400 million civil lawsuit against the faculty.