A fifth former sheriff’s deputy in Mississippi was sentenced Thursday to more than 27 years in prison for breaking into a home with a group of law enforcement officers as they tortured two Black men, an act the judge called “egregious and despicable.
FILE - This combination of photos shows, from top left, former Rankin County sheriff's deputies Hunter Elward, Christian Dedmon, Brett McAlpin, Jeffrey Middleton, Daniel Opdyke and former Richland police officer Joshua Hartfield appearing at the Rankin County Circuit Court in Brandon, Miss., Aug. 14, 2023.
The officers invented false charges against the victims, planting a gun and illegal drugs at the scene of their crime, and stuck to their cover story for months until finally admitting Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker. Elward admitted to shoving a gun into Jenkins’ mouth and firing it in what federal prosecutors said was meant to be a “mock execution.”
“No bad mugshots,” Dedmon texted — a green light, according to prosecutors, to use excessive force on parts of the body that wouldn’t appear in a booking photo. After Elward shot Jenkins in the mouth, lacerating his tongue and breaking his jaw, they devised a coverup. McAlpin pressured Parker to go along with it, asking him to keep quiet in exchange for his freedom. The deputies agreed to plant drugs, and false charges stood against Jenkins and Parker for months.
Federal prosecutors said the neighbor referred to people at the home as “those people” and “thugs.” The information included in the charging documents, which the officers did not dispute when they pleaded guilty, revealed some of them used racial taunts and epithets throughout the episode.
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