Ex-deputy gets 40-years as judge decries attack on 2 Black men
A fourth former Mississippi sheriff’s deputy was sentenced Wednesday for his part in the racist torture of two Black men by a group of white officers who called themselves the “Goon Squad,” receiving 40 years in federal prison.
Christian Dedmon, 29, did not look at the victims as he apologized and said he’d never forgive himself for the pain he caused.
All six former officers charged in the case pleaded guilty last year, admitting that they subjected Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker to numerous acts of racist torture in January 2023 after a neighbor complained the men were staying in a home with a white woman. Prosecutors said Dedmon slapped the men with a sex toy and threatened to brutalize them with it.
U. S. District Judge Tom Lee said Wednesday that Dedmon carried out the most “shocking, brutal and cruel attacks imaginable” against Jenkins and Parker and against a white man during a traffic stop weeks earlier.
Jenkins, who still has trouble speaking due to his injuries, said in a statement readbyhis lawyer that Dedmon’s actions were themost depraved of any of those who attacked him.
“Deputy Dedmon is the worst example of a police officer in the United States,” Jenkins said. “Deputy Dedmon was the most aggressive, sickest and the most wicked.”
Hours before Dedmon’s sentencing, former officer
Daniel Opdyke, 28, cried profusely as he spoke before the judge announced his sentence of 17.5 years. Turning to look at the two victims, Opdyke said isolation behind bars has given him time to reflect on “how I transformedinto themonster 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 and left the courtroom before Opdyke finished speaking. Jenkins said he was “broken” and “ashamed” by the cruel acts inflicted upon him.
The judge said Opdyke may not have been fully aware of what beingamember of the Goon Squad entailedwhen Lt. Jeffreymiddleton asked him to join, but he did know it involved using excessive force.
“You were not a passive observer,” Lee said. “You actively participated in that brutal attack.”
All six former officers pleaded guilty last year to breaking into a home with
out a warrant and torturing the Black men with a stun gun, a sex toy and other objects.
On Tuesday, Lee gave a nearly 20-year prison sentence to Hunter Elward, 31, and a 17.5-year sentence to Middleton, 46, calling 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.
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 Michael Corey 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, 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 coverup that included planting drugs and a gun. False charges stood against Jenkins and Parker for months.
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.