Former Rankin County sheriff's deputies Hunter Elward (top left), Christian Dedmon, Brett McAlpin, Jeffrey Middleton (bottom left), Daniel Opdyke, and former Richland police officer Joshua Hartfield appearing at the Rankin County Circuit Court. Photo / AP
A former Mississippi sheriff’s deputy was sentenced on Tuesday to about 20 years in prison for his part in torturing two black men in a racist assault and for his role in a separate episode in which a white man was sexually assaulted.
Hunter Elward, 31, was sentenced by US District Judge Tom Lee, who handed down a 241-month sentence. Lee is also due to sentence five other former police officers who admitted torturing Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker after a neighbour complained the men were staying in a home with a white woman.
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 last year, 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 shoving a gun into Jenkins’ mouth and firing in a “mock execution” that went awry.
The terror began on January 24, 2023, with a racist call for extrajudicial violence when 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. McAlpin told Deputy Christian 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 cover-up 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 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.
Jenkins is a musician, and his injuries have prevented him from singing as he used to. He also said he has trouble speaking and eating. Parker said he relives the episode in his nightmares.
Both men, who were sitting in the front row, called for the “stiffest of sentences”. Their lawyer, Malik Shabazz, said they were too traumatised to speak in court, and he read statements on their behalf.
“I am hurt. I am broken,” Jenkins wrote in his statement. “They tried to take my manhood from me. They did some unimaginable things to me, and the effects will linger for the rest of my life.”
Elward, who wore a dark blue jumpsuit with tape obscuring the name of the facility where he is housed, said before being sentenced that he wouldn’t make excuses. He turned to address Jenkins and Parker and looked at them directly.
“I don’t want to get too personal. I see you every night, and I can’t go back and do what’s right,” Elward said. “I am so sorry for what I did.”
Parker then stood up and said, “I forgive you.”
Elward’s lawyer, Joe Hollomon, said his client first witnessed Rankin County deputies turn a blind eye to misconduct in 2017.
“It became the new norm, it became institutional,” Hollomon said. “Hunter was initiated into a culture of corruption at the Rankin County Sheriff’s Office.”
Elward was also sentenced on Tuesday for his role in an assault on another person that took place weeks before Jenkins and Parker were tortured. For the first time, prosecutors on Tuesday identified the victim as Alan Schmidt and read a statement from him detailing what happened to him on December 4, 2022.
During a traffic stop that night, Schmidt said Rankin County deputies accused him of possessing stolen property. They pulled him from the car and beat him. Then, Dedmon forced him to his knees and tried to insert his genitals into Schmidt’s mouth, as Elward watched.
“I pray every day that I can forgive them one day and hopefully forget the humiliation and the evil physical and sexual assault that I endured,” Schmidt wrote. “I know that I’m not their only victim, and I pray for each victim that has crossed paths with the Goon Squad members.”
The officers charged with torturing Parker and Jenkins include Elward, McAlpin, Dedmon, Jeffrey Middleton and Daniel Opdyke of the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department and Joshua Hartfield, a Richland police officer. They have pleaded guilty to numerous federal and state charges.
On the federal charges, all the former officers are facing potentially decades-long prison sentences. They also agreed to prosecutor-recommended sentences ranging from five to 30 years in state court. Time served for separate convictions at the state level will run concurrently with the potentially longer federal sentences.
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 US 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.
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.
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.