A federal judge sentenced two former Mississippi law enforcement officers to prison on Tuesday for torturing and abusing two Black men last year, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ).
Hunter Elward, a 31-year-old former Rankin County Sheriff’s Office (RCSO) deputy, received a 20-year jail sentence, and Jeffrey Middleton, a 46-year-old ex-RCSO lieutenant, was sentenced to 17.5 years in prison.
The DOJ said in a press release that four other former law enforcement officers—Brett McAlpin, Christian Dedmon, Daniel Opdyke, and Joshua Hartfield—are set to be sentenced this week.
All six defendants pleaded guilty last August to multiple felony offenses, including civil rights conspiracy, deprivation of rights under color of law, discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence, conspiracy to obstruct justice, and obstruction of justice.
Attorney General Merrick Garland has denounced the defendants for “their heinous attack on citizens they had sworn an oath to protect.”
“The Justice Department will hold accountable officers who violate constitutional rights, and in so doing, betray the public trust,” Mr. Garland stated.
The former lawmen, all of them white, referred to themselves as “the Goon Squad” because of their willingness to clandestinely engage in excessive force, according to court documents filed in the case.
The two victims, Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker, were brutalized while held captive and handcuffed during a two-hour ordeal that started when the six officers invaded the home they were staying in.
The defendants stormed into the home in Braxton, Mississippi, without a warning or a search warrant on Jan. 24 after the sheriff’s office received a complaint from a white neighbor that they had seen “suspicious behavior” from the black men living there.
They arrested Mr. Jenkins and Mr. Parker without probable cause, called them racial slurs, punched, kicked, tased them 17 times, forced them to ingest liquids, and assaulted them.
One of the officers also shoved a pistol into Mr. Jenkins’s mouth in a “mock execution” that went wrong when he pulled the trigger, court records showed. Mr. Jenkins’s jaw was shattered by the gunshot.
Rather than providing medical aid to Mr. Jenkins, who was lying bleeding on the floor, the officers gathered outside the home to devise a false cover story and took steps to corroborate it.
They allegedly left a gun at the scene, destroyed surveillance video, tried to burn the victims’ clothes, and submitted fraudulent drug evidence to the crime lab. The defendants also gave false statements to investigators.
The victims filed a $400 million federal civil rights lawsuit against Rankin County last June.
“The defendants in this case tortured and inflicted unspeakable harm on their victims, egregiously violated the civil rights of citizens who they were supposed to protect, and shamefully betrayed the oath they swore as law enforcement officers,” Mr. Garland said.
Meanwhile, Mississippi State Attorney General Lynn Fitch has pledged to deliver justice to the victims and said that his office will not tolerate such abuses of power.
“This brutal attack caused more than physical harm to these two individual victims, it severed that vital trust with the people,” Mr. Fitch stated.
Reuters contributed to this report.
