Two more former Mississippi deputies who have pleaded guilty to subjecting two Black men to racially motivated torture in January 2023 are set to be sentenced today, one day after fellow officers were sentenced to years in prison.

Former Rankin County sheriff's deputy Hunter Elward received just over a 20-year sentence from U.S. District Judge Tom Lee in a Jackson federal court. Jeffrey Middleton, the leader of the "Goon Squad" that abused the two men and another former deputy, was handed a 17.5-year prison sentence. 

Daniel Opdyke and Christian Dedmon, who were also Rankin County sheriff's deputies at the time of the assault, are expected to be sentenced by Lee today. They each face up to 20 years in prison. 

The remaining officers, former deputy Brett McAlpin and former Richland police officer Joshua Hartfield, are scheduled to be sentenced by Lee on Thursday. 

Dedmon will also be sentenced for leading another assault, this one on a White man, in December 2022. Dedmon was one of several Rankin County deputies who pulled over a man identified in court Tuesday as Alan Schmidt. Schmidt was handcuffed, pulled from his vehicle and beaten. Dedmon then fired his gun into the air, forced Schmidt to his knees, and attempted to sexually assault him. Elward, one of the deputies sentenced Tuesday, was present at the time. 

During the January 2023 incident, the six officers tortured Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker. The incident began on Jan. 24, 2023, with a racist call for extrajudicial violence. 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, Mississippi. McAlpin told 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. Dedmon assaulted them with a sex toy.

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.

In a statement Tuesday, 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.

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.

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.

In:
• Mississippi