Former Rankin County sheriff’s deputies Brett Morris McAlpin, 53; Christian Dedmon (29); Jeffrey Middleton (46); Hunter Elward (31); and Daniel Opdyke, 28, and former Richland City Police Officer Joshua Hartfield, 32, pleaded guilty in August to those charges.
McAlpin, Middleton and Opdyke were reportedly sentenced to 20 years in prison; Dedmon (25); Elward (45), and Hartfield to 15 years in federal penitentiaries.
Prosecutors said the white officers had nicknamed themselves “The Goon Squad” because of their willingness to use excessive force and cover up their brutal attack on Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker in January. of 2023.
During the attack, they verbally abused Jenkins and Parker, beat them, assaulted them with stun guns and a sex toy, and one of them shot Jenkins in the mouth in a “mock execution.”
The former law enforcement officers also pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the assault and were sentenced to federal prison terms of 10 to 40 years.
In January 2023, McAlpin received a call from a white person complaining that Jenkins and Parker were residing with a white woman at a home in Braxton, Mississippi.
The complaint was enough for the former police officers to go to the house without a court order and that’s where the martyrdom began.
At Wednesday’s sentencing, lawyers read statements from the victims.
“After Hunter Elward shot me, they left me to die bleeding on the ground and attempted to set me up to imprison me,” a statement on Jenkins’ behalf said.
“They hit me, kicked me, whipped me, insulted me, waterboarded me and humiliated me over and over again (…) I can no longer do what I love to do and that is sing,” the text added.
“I’m devastated inside and I never think I’ll ever be the person I was,” Jenkins said.
For his part, Parker’s statement emphasized that the actions of that night of terror “have left him a scar that will last forever.”
“I never knew that those sworn to protect and serve would be the ones I would need protection from,” he warned.
Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch said that “the actions of these six men caused serious harm to these two victims, Michael Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker, and violated the trust of all the citizens they swore to protect.”
The state sentences imposed this Wednesday on these subjects in a court in Brandon (Mississippi) must be served simultaneously with the federal ones.
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