Former Mississippi deputy given a 40-year sentence

JACKSON, Miss. — 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 17.5 years.

Lee said 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 Wednesday, saying he’d never forgive himself for the pain he caused.

Jenkins, who 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.

“Deputy Dedmon is the worst example of a police officer in the United States,” Jenkins’ lawyer read. “Deputy Dedmon was the most aggressive, sickest and the most wicked.”

On Tuesday, Lee sentenced 31-year-old Hunter Elward, who shot Jenkins, to nearly 20 years in prison and Jeffrey Middleton, 46, to 17.5 years. The judge called their actions “egregious and despicable.” 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, are set for sentencing Thursday.

All six pleaded guilty last August, 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 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 said. “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 “broken” and “ashamed” by the cruelty inflicted on him.

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 group entailed when Middleton asked him to join, but Opdyke 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.

The former officers stuck to their cover story for months until finally admitting that they tortured Jenkins and Parker. Elward admitted to shoving a gun into Jenkins’ mouth and firing it in a “mock execution” that went awry.

In a statement Tuesday, Attorney General 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. 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, prosecutors said, 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 coverup that included planting drugs and a gun. False charges stood against Jenkins and Parker for months.