Two members of Mississippi 'Goon Squad' sentenced Wednesday

JACKSON, Miss. (WJTV) – Two former Mississippi law enforcement officers, who pled guilty to a long list of state and federal charges for torturing two Black men, were sentenced on Wednesday, March 20.

Daniel Opdyke was sentenced to 17.5 years in prison on Wednesday morning. Christian Dedmon, 29, received 40 years in prison.

Opdyke, 28, cried profusely 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. The other victim, Michael Corey Jenkins, said he was “broken” and “ashamed” by the cruel acts visited upon him.

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 Lt. Jeffrey 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.

Dedmon, who did not look at the victims as he spoke, apologized and said he’d never forgive himself for the pain he caused.

Jenkins still has trouble speaking due to his injuries, and in a statement read by his lawyer, said Dedmon’s actions were the most 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."

On Tuesday, March 19, Hunter Elward, 31, and Middleton, 46, were both sentenced in federal court. Elward received about 20 years in prison, and Middleton received 17.5 years in prison. 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, March 21.

On Monday, the victims of the so-called “Goon Squad,” Jenkins and Parker, and their attorneys called for a federal judge to impose the strictest possible penalties at their sentencings this week.

Jenkins and Parker were subjected to numerous acts of racially motivated, violent torture last year.

In January 2023, the group of six 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 on Jan. 24, 2023, with a racist call for extrajudicial violence when a white person phoned McAlpin and complained that two Black men were staying with a white woman at a house in Braxton. McAlpin told Deputy Dedmon, who texted a group of white deputies so willing to use excessive force they called themselves “The Goon Squad.”

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.

After Elward shot Jenkins in the mouth, they devised a coverup that included planting drugs and a gun. False charges stood against Jenkins and Parker for months. Jenkins suffered a lacerated tongue and broken jaw.

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.

All six former officers are facing potentially decades-long prison sentences on the federal charges. Time served for separate convictions at the state level will run concurrently with the potentially longer federal sentences.

In a statement Tuesday, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland condemned the “heinous attack on citizens they had sworn an oath to protect.”

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 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 higher concentrations of Black residents.

Opdyke was the first to admit what they did, his attorney Jeff Reynolds said Wednesday. On April 12, he showed investigators a WhatsApp text thread where the officers discussed their plan and what happened. Had he thrown his phone in a river, as some of the other officers did, investigators might not have discovered the encrypted messages.

Reynolds also said Opdyke was sexually assaulted as a child and had seen the older deputies as father figures. That made him susceptible to the culture of misconduct within the Rankin County Sheriff’s Office, Reynolds said.

“When a new officer goes over there, they start indoctrinating people,” Reynolds said. “Where is the true leadership? Why aren’t they in this court?”

On Tuesday, Elward’s attorney also referenced a “culture of corruption” inside the sheriff’s office.

Dedmon, like Opdyke and Elward, also pleaded guilty to taking part in an assault on a white man during a traffic stop on Dec. 4, 2022 — weeks before Jenkins and Parker were tortured. Prosecutors revealed the victim’s identity Tuesday as Alan Schmidt. Reynolds said Opdyke held Schmidt down until Dedmon arrived, but didn’t beat him or sexually assault him.

According to a statement from Schmidt that prosecutors read in court, Dedmon accused him of possessing stolen property. Schmidt said he was handcuffed, pulled from his vehicle and beaten until he “started to see spots.”

Prosecutors said Elward and Opdyke failed to intervene as Dedmon punched and kicked him, used a Taser on him, fired his gun into the air to threaten him, and then sexually assaulted him.

Schmidt said Dedmon forced him to his knees, pulled out his “private part” and hit him in the face with it, trying to insert it into his mouth. Dedmon then grabbed Schmidt’s genitals and rubbed against his body as he screamed for them to stop, Schmidt said.

“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.

For months, Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey, whose deputies committed the crimes, said little about the episode. After the officers pleaded guilty in August, Bailey said the officers had gone rogue and promised to change the department. Jenkins and Parker have called for his resignation, and they have filed a $400 million civil lawsuit against the department.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.