Ex-deputy gets 20 years for torture of two Black men
Five accomplices are due to be sentenced over 2023 attack at a Braxton, Miss., home.
JACKSON, Miss. — A former Mississippi sheriff’s deputy was sentenced Tuesday to about 20 years in prison for his part in torturing two Black men last year after a neighbor complained that the men were staying in a home with a white woman.
Hunter Elward was sentenced to 241 months by U.S. District Judge Tom Lee. The judge is due to sentence five other former law enforcement officers who admitted to subjecting Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker to numerous acts of racist torture.
Before sentencing, Lee called Elward’s crimes “egregious and despicable” and said a “sentence at the top of the guidelines range is justified — is more than justified.” He continued: “It’s what the defendant deserves. It’s what the community and the defendant’s victims deserve.”
In January 2023, the six white officers burst into a Rankin County home without a warrant and assaulted Jenkins and Parker with stun guns, a sex toy and other objects. Elward admitted to shoving a gun into Jenkins’ mouth and firing in a “mock execution” that went awry.
The terror began Jan. 24, 2023, with a racist call for extrajudicial violence. A white person phoned Rankin County Deputy Brett McAlpin and complained that two Black men were staying with a white woman at a house in Braxton, Miss.
McAlpin told Deputy Christian Dedmon, who texted a group of white deputies known for using excessive force, who called themselves “the Goon Squad.”
Once inside the house, they handcuffed Jenkins and Parker and poured milk, alcohol and chocolate syrup over their faces. They forced them to strip and shower together to conceal the mess. They mocked the victims with racial slurs and shocked them with stun guns.
After Jenkins was shot in the mouth when the mock execution went awry, the deputies devised a cover-up that included planting drugs and a gun. False charges stood for months against Jenkins and Parker.
Jenkins suffered a lacerated tongue and broken jaw. He still has trouble speaking and eating.
At a Monday news conference, Jenkins and Parker called for the “stiffest of sentences.”
“It’s been very hard for me, for us,” Jenkins said. “We are hoping for the best and preparing for the worst.”
Malik Shabazz, an attorney representing both men, said the result of the sentencing hearings could have national implications.
“Michael Jenkins and Eddie Parker continue to suffer emotionally and physically since this horrific and bloody attack by Rankin County deputies,” Shabazz said. “A message must be sent to police in Mississippi and all over America: That level of criminal conduct will be met with the harshest of consequences.”
Months before federal prosecutors announced charges in August, an investigation by the Associated Press linked some of the deputies to at least four other violent encounters with Black men since 2019 that left two dead and one with lasting injuries.
The officers charged are McAlpin, Dedmon, Elward, Jeffrey Middleton and Daniel Opdyke of the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department and Joshua Hartfield, a Richland police officer.
They have all pleaded guilty to charges including conspiracy against rights, obstructions of justice, deprivation of rights under color of law, discharge of a firearm under a crime of violence and conspiracy to obstruct justice.
Court papers identified Elward as one of the Goon Squad members. Middleton and Opdyke were also identified as members.
Most of the officers’ lawyers did not respond to emails requesting comment Monday. But Jason Kirschberg, representing Opdyke, said: “Daniel has accepted responsibility for his actions and his failures to act . ... He has admitted he was wrong and feels deep remorse for the pain he caused the victims.”
On the federal charges, Elward faced a maximum sentence of 120 years plus life in prison and $2.75 million in fines; Dedmon faces the same. Hartfield faces a possible sentence of 80 years and $1.5 million in fines; McAlpin, 90 years and $1.75 million; Middleton, 80 years and $1.5 million; and Opdyke, 100 years plus a $2million fine.
The former deputies agreed in state court to prosecutor-recommended sentences of five to 30 years. Their sentences for convictions at the state level are to run concurrently with their federal sentences.
Majority-white Rankin County is just east of the state capital, Jackson, home to one of the largest shares of Black residents of any major U.S. city.
The deputies warned Jenkins and Parker to “stay out of Rankin County and go back to Jackson or ‘their side’ of the Pearl River,” court documents say, referencing an area with high concentrations of Black residents.
In the gruesome crimes committed by men tasked with enforcing the law, 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.
Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey, who oversaw five of the six who committed the crimes, said little about the case for months. After the deputies pleaded guilty in August, he said they’d gone rogue and promised to make changes in his agency.
Jenkins and Parker have called for Bailey’s resignation and have filed a $400million civil lawsuit against the Sheriff ’s Department.