Six former law enforcement officers in Mississippi who tortured and sexually abused two Black men for more than an hour during a home raid pleaded guilty to federal civil rights charges.
The Justice Department believes there is evidence to show excessive force, including a shocking incident where one of the officers allegedly shot one of the men in the mouth in a mock execution gone awry. The federal indictment shows that the deputies forced a dildo in the men’s mouths and attempted to sodomize one of the men with it.
The charges against five former Rankin County sheriff’s deputies and another officer were unsealed in court on Thursday, Aug. 3.
The defendants made their appearance before a magistrate, and later in the morning, they appeared before U.S. District Judge Tom Lee, who took their guilty pleas, WAPT reported.
“We wanted justice, and we are walking in the pages of justice in this hour,” said an attorney for the victims Malik Shabazz during a press conference Thursday.
The names of the former RCSD employees charged are Hunter Elward, Christian Dedmon, Brett McAlpin, Jeffrey Middleton, and Daniel Opdyke, and former Richland K9 police officer Joshua Hartfield. They are facing over a dozen counts.
The men, all white, were charged with conspiracy against rights, deprivation of rights under the court of law, conspiracy to obstruct justice, and obstruction of justice.
Dedmon and Elward are facing additional charges of using, carrying, or brandishing a firearm during an act of violence, which carries a potential life sentence.
“They came into court shackled and bound … a far cry from the arrogance, the laughing, the mockery, from the heinous police brutality of January 24,” Shabazz said.
According to the indictment, on Jan. 24, Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker, both Black men, were at a residence in Braxton when deputies barged into the premises without a warrant.
Jenkins and Parker had come to…
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