SIX EX-MISSISSIPPI OFFICERS PLEAD GUILTY
Six white former Mississippi law officers pleaded guilty on Monday to state charges for torturing two Black men in a racist assault. All six had admitted their guilt in a connected federal civil rights case.
Federal prosecutors saw echoes of Mississippi’s dark history, including the 1964 killing of three civil rights workers after a deputy handed them off to the Ku Klux Klan. The sheriff whose deputies committed the crimes this year called it the worst case of police brutality he had ever seen.
Prosecutors say some of the officers nicknamed themselves the “Goon Squad” because of their willingness to use excessive force and cover up attacks, including the assault that ended with a deputy shooting one victim in the mouth.
In January, the officers entered a house without a warrant and handcuffed and assaulted the two men with stun guns, a sex toy and other objects. The officers mocked them with racial slurs throughout a 90-minute torture session, then devised a cover-up that included planting drugs and a gun, leading to false charges that stood against the victims for months.
Their conspiracy unraveled after one officer told the sheriff he had lied, leading to confessions from the others. The charges against the victims weren’t dropped until June after federal and state investigators got involved, according to their attorney.
The men include five former Rankin County sheriff ’s deputies — Brett McAlpin, Hunter Elward, Christian Dedmon, Jeffrey Middleton and Daniel Opdyke — and a former police officer from the city of Richland, Joshua Hartfield, who was off duty during the assault.
Elward pleaded guilty to aggravated assault for shooting his handgun in the victim’s mouth in what authorities called a “mock execution,” thinking the weapon would dry fire without a bullet in the chamber.
They appeared Monday in jumpsuits with the names of the jails covered by tape.
They agreed to sentences recommended by state prosecutors ranging from five to 30 years, although the judge isn’t bound by that. Time served for the state convictions will run concurrently with the potentially longer federal sentences they’ll receive in November.
The victims — Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker — arrived together to Monday’s hearing and sat in the front row, just feet from their attackers’ families. They were embraced by Monica Lee, the mother of Damien Cameron, a Black man who died in Elward’s custody in 2021.
“I enjoyed the view of seeing the walk of shame. Head down, the disgust everybody felt for them and that they feel for themselves,” Parker said after the officers were led away in shackles. “I hope this is a lesson to everybody out there: Justice will be served.”
The charges followed an Associated Press investigation in March that linked some of the officers to at least four violent encounters since 2019 that left two Black men dead. In addition to Jenkins’ injuries, another Black man also accused them of shoving a gun inside his mouth. The Justice Department launched a civil rights probe in February.
All six of the former officers pleaded guilty to state charges of obstruction of justice and conspiracy to hinder prosecution. Dedmon and Elward, who kicked in a door, also admitted to home invasion.