Mississippi ex-deputies sentenced to 40 and 17 years as judge decries brutal attack on 2 Black men
Two former Mississippi deputies wept in court Wednesday as a federal judge sentenced them to years in prison and condemned their cruelty for breaking into a home with four other white officers and torturing two Black men.
U.S. District Judge Tom Lee sentenced Christian Dedmon, 29, to 40 years in prison and Daniel Opdyke, 28, to 17½ years.
Lee said Wednesday that Dedmon carried out the most “shocking, brutal and cruel attacks imaginable” against the two Black men, Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker, and against a white man during a traffic stop weeks earlier.
Dedmon did not look at Jenkins and Parker as he apologized and said he’d never forgive himself for the pain he caused.
Jenkins, who still has trouble speaking after being shot in the mouth during the January 2023 attack, said in a statement read by his lawyer that Dedmon’s actions were the most depraved of any of those who attacked him.
On Tuesday, Lee sentenced 31-year-old Hunter Elward, who shot Jenkins, to nearly 20 years in prison and Jeffrey Middleton, 46, to 17½ years. The judge called their actions “egregious and despicable.” They, like Opdyke and Dedmon, worked as Rankin County sheriff’s deputies at the time of the attack.
Another former deputy, Brett McAlpin, 53, and a former Richland Police Officer Joshua Hartfield, 32, are due to be sentenced Thursday.
Last year, law enforcement officers burst into a home without a warrant and assaulted the two men with stun guns, a sex toy and other objects.
All six pleaded guilty last year, admitting that they broke into a home without a warrant and tortured Jenkins and Parker after a neighbor complained the men were staying there with a white woman.
Hours before Dedmon’s sentencing, Opdyke cried profusely as he turned to look at Jenkins and Parker, saying his isolation behind bars had given him time to reflect on “how I transformed into the monster I became that night.”
“The weight of my actions and the harm I’ve 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 up and left the courtroom before Opdyke finished speaking. Jenkins said he was “broken” and “ashamed” by the cruel acts inflicted upon him.
Six white former Mississippi law officers pleaded guilty to state charges for torturing two Black men in a racist assault.
Some of the former officers involved in the attack called themselves the “Goon Squad.” The judge said Opdyke may not have been fully aware of what being a member of the Goon Squad entailed when Middleton asked him to join, but he did know it involved using excessive force.
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.
Mississippi sheriff’s deputies already being investigated for possible civil rights violations are now also accused of sexual assault.
The former officers stuck to their cover story for months until finally admitting that they had tortured Jenkins and Parker. Elward admitted shoving a gun into Jenkins’ mouth and firing it in a “mock execution” that went awry.
In a statement Tuesday, U.S. Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland condemned the “heinous attack on citizens they had sworn an oath to protect.”
The terror began Jan. 24, 2023, with a racist call for extrajudicial violence when a white person in Rankin County complained to McAlpin that two Black men were staying with a white woman at a house in Braxton, Miss. McAlpin told Dedmon, who texted a group of white deputies asking if they were “available for a mission.” “No bad mugshots,” he texted — a green light, according to prosecutors, to use excessive force on parts of the body that wouldn’t appear in a booking photo.
Once inside, they handcuffed Jenkins and his friend Parker and poured milk, alcohol and chocolate syrup over their faces. They forced them to strip naked and shower together to conceal the mess. They mocked the victims with racial slurs and shocked them with stun guns. Dedmon and Opdyke assaulted them with a sex toy.
After Elward shot Jenkins in the mouth, lacerating his tongue and breaking his jaw, they devised a cover-up that included planting drugs and a gun. False charges stood against Jenkins and Parker for months.
Incomplete homicide autopsy reports continue to pile up in Mississippi even as state leaders have touted tough-on-crime governance this year.
The majority-white Rankin County is just east of the state capital, Jackson, home to one of the highest percentages of Black residents of any major U.S. city. The officers shouted 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 had done, his attorney Jeff Reynolds said Wednesday. On April 12, he showed investigators a WhatsApp text thread where the officers discussed their plan and what happened. Had he thrown his phone in a river, as some of the other officers did, investigators might not have discovered the encrypted messages.
Reynolds also said that Opdyke was sexually assaulted as a child and that he had seen the older deputies as father figures. That made him susceptible to the culture of misconduct within the Rankin County Sheriff’s Office, Reynolds said.
“When a new officer goes over there, they start indoctrinating people,” Reynolds said. “Where is the true leadership? Why aren’t they in this court?”
Dedmon, who planted drugs on Jenkins to frame him on false charges, said bad behavior did not get in the way of his promotion to narcotics investigator.
“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 taking part in an assault on a white man during a traffic stop Dec. 4, 2022. Prosecutors revealed the victim’s identity Tuesday as Alan Schmidt. Reynolds said Opdyke held Schmidt down until Dedmon arrived but didn’t beat him or sexually assault him.
The body of a Mississippi man who died after being hit by a police SUV driven by an off-duty officer was exhumed Monday.
According to a statement from Schmidt that prosecutors read in court, Dedmon accused him of possessing stolen property. Schmidt said he was handcuffed, pulled from his vehicle and beaten until he “started to see spots.”
Prosecutors said Elward and Opdyke failed to intervene as Dedmon punched and kicked him, used a Taser on him, fired his gun into the air to threaten him, and then sexually assaulted him.
“What sick individual does this?” Schmidt wrote.
Dedmon admitted firing a gun into the air to intimidate Schmidt but denied sexually assaulting him. Prosecutors said they read details from the sexual assault into the court record 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 reelected in November after no one ran against him, revealed no details about his deputies’ actions when he announced that they had been fired last June. After they pleaded guilty in August, Bailey said the officers had gone rogue and he promised changes. Jenkins and Parker called for his resignation and filed a $400-million civil lawsuit against the department.
Goldberg and Pettus write for the Associated Press.
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