Court sentences last ‘Goon Squad’ case officers

JACKSON, Miss. — A federal judge on Thursday finished handing down prison terms of about 10 to 40 years to six white former Mississippi law enforcement officers who pleaded guilty to breaking into a home without a warrant and torturing two Black men in an hourslong attack.

Two men were sentenced each day starting Tuesday.

Five of the men had served as Rankin County sheriff’s deputies; the sixth was a police officer. The deputies were known as “The Goon Squad.”

U.S. District Judge Tom Lee called the torture — which included repeated uses of stun guns and assaults with a sex toy before one of the victims was shot in the mouth — the culprits’ perpetrated “egregious and despicable” and gave sentences near the top of federal guidelines to five of the six men who attacked Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker.

Brett McAlpin, 53, who was the fourth highest-ranking officer in the Rankin County Sheriff’s Office, received a sentence of about 27 years Thursday. McAlpin nodded to his family in the courtroom and offered an apology before the judge sentenced him.

“This was all wrong, very wrong. It’s not how people should treat each other and even more so, it’s not how law enforcement should treat people,” said McAlpin, who did not look at the victims as he spoke. “I’m really sorry for being a part of something that made law enforcement look so bad.”

Joshua Hartfield, 32, a former police officer who was not a “Goon Squad” member, was the last of the six to be sentenced. Before giving him a 10-year term, Lee said Hartfield did not have a history of using excessive force and was roped into the brutal episode by one of the former deputies, Christian Dedmon. However, Lee said, Hartfield failed to intervene to stop the violence and participated in a cover-up.

Lee sentenced Dedmon, 29, to 40 years and Daniel Opdyke, 28, to 17½ years on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, Lee sentenced Hunter Elward, 31, to 20 years and Jeffrey Middleton, 46, to 17½ years.

Pattern of abuse

In March 2023, 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.

The torture in the Jenkins-Parker case began Jan. 24, 2023, with a racist call for extrajudicial violence when a white person complained to McAlpin that two Black men were staying with a white woman at a house in Braxton, Mississippi.

After entering the house, the officers mocked Jenkins and Parker with racial slurs; shocked them with stun guns; handcuffed them; poured milk, alcohol and chocolate syrup over their faces; and assaulted them with a sex toy. They also forced Jenkins and Parker to strip naked and shower together to conceal the mess.

In a mock execution that went awry, Elward shot Jenkins in the mouth, lacerating his tongue and breaking his jaw. The officers then devised a coverup, agreeing to plant drugs on Jenkins and Parker and file false charges against them that stood for months.

Majority-white Rankin County is just east of Jackson, which is home to one of the higher percentages of Black residents of any major U.S. city.

Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey revealed no details about his deputies’ actions when he announced they had been fired last June. After they pleaded guilty in August, Bailey said the officers had gone rogue and promised changes.

Jenkins and Parker called for his resignation and filed a $400 million civil lawsuit against the Rankin County Sheriff’s Office.