By MICHAEL GOLDBERG and EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS (Associated Press)
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A third former Mississippi sheriff’s deputy has been given a 17.5-year prison term for his involvement in the racist torture of two Black men by a group of white officers who called themselves “the Goon Squad.” Daniel Opdyke was sentenced Wednesday to 17.5 years in federal prison.
Opdyke, 28, cried heavily as he spoke in court before the judge announced his sentence. Turning to look at the two victims, he said his isolation behind bars has 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.”
One of the victims, Eddie Terrell Parker, rested his head in his hands and closed his eyes, then stood up and left the courtroom before Opdyke finished speaking.
U.S. District Judge Tom Lee 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. “You were not a passive observer, you actively participated in that brutal attack,” Lee said.”
All six of the former officers admitted last year to unlawfully entering a home and torturing the Black men with a stun gun, a sex toy and other objects. Christian Dedmon, 29, also faced a lengthy prison term at his sentencing, set for Wednesday afternoon before Lee.
On Tuesday, Lee gave a nearly 20-year prison sentence to Hunter Elward, 31, and a 17.5-year sentence to Jeffrey 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, causing cuts on his tongue and breaking his jaw, they arranged a plan to hide the crime by placing drugs and a gun. Jenkins and Parker faced false charges for months.
The mostly white Rankin County is located just east of the state capital, Jackson, which has one of the highest percentages of Black residents among major U.S. cities. According to court documents, the officers yelled at Jenkins and Parker to go back to Jackson or the 'Black side' of the Pearl River.
Opdyke's attorney Jeff Reynolds stated that Opdyke was the first to confess. On April 12, he showed investigators a WhatsApp text conversation where the officers discussed their plan and what happened. If he had thrown his phone in a river, like some of the other officers did, investigators might not have found the encrypted messages.
Dedmon and Opdyke, like Elward, are also being sentenced after admitting to their roles in an attack on a white man on Dec. 4, 2022 — a few weeks before Jenkins and Parker were mistreated. According to prosecutors, the victim's name is Alan Schmidt. Reynolds said Opdyke held Schmidt down until Dedmon arrived, but did not beat or sexually assault him.
According to a statement from Schmidt that prosecutors read in court, Dedmon accused him of having stolen property during a traffic stop that night. Schmidt explained that he was handcuffed, pulled from his vehicle, and beaten until he started seeing spots.
According to prosecutors, Elward and Opdyke did not intervene as Dedmon assaulted him by punching and kicking, using a Taser, firing his gun into the air, and then sexually assaulting him.
Schmidt stated that Dedmon forced him to his knees, exposed himself, and hit him in the face with it, attempting to put it into his mouth. Dedmon then grabbed Schmidt's private parts and rubbed against his body as he pleaded for them to stop.
“What sick individual does this? He has so much power over us already, so to act this way, he must be truly sick in this head,” Schmidt wrote in his statement.
Elward and Middlelton were emotional as they apologized in court on Tuesday. Elward’s attorney, Joe Hollomon, said his client first witnessed Rankin County deputies turn a blind eye to misconduct in 2017.
“Hunter (Elward) was initiated into a culture of corruption at the Rankin County Sheriff’s Office,” Hollomon said.
Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey, who took office in 2012, did not provide any details about his deputies’ actions when he announced their termination last June. After they pleaded guilty in August, Bailey stated that the officers had acted independently and pledged to reform the department. Jenkins and Parker have called for his resignation and have filed a $400 million civil lawsuit against the department.
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Michael Goldberg is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow him at @mikergoldberg.