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2 more deputies from Mississippi “Goon Squad” to be sentenced in federal court for racially motivated torture of two Black men
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.
Rogelio V. Solis / AP
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.
Rogelio V. Solis / AP
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.
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An Orange County, California, jury found 26-year-old Sam Woodward guilty of first-degree murder with a hate crime enhancement Wednesday for the 2018 death of Blaze Bernstein, whose body was found days after he went missing, buried in a shallow grave at a Lake Forest park.
The jury reached its verdict after deliberating for just one day.
The judge hushed the courtroom as applause was heard during the reading of the verdict.
The prosecution had argued for Woodward to be found guilty of first-degree murder as a hate crime. Defense attorneys argued that Woodward should be convicted for voluntary manslaughter and acquitted of hate-crime allegations.
Jurors also were asked to consider second-degree murder. Closing arguments in the case had begun Friday, two-and-a-half months after the trial began in Santa Ana.
Following the reading of the guilty verdict, Bernstein’s parents shared their gratitude to the jury, to law enforcement and to the “army of supporters and volunteers” who were with them through the six-and-a-half-year ordeal.
“This was a great relief that justice was served and this despicable human, who murdered our son, will no longer be a threat to the public,” his mother Jeanne Pepper Bernstein said. “We are grateful to the jury for their service and their long days and weeks they spent in that service. Justice has been served.”
Sam Woodward was charged with stabbing Bernstein to death a little over six years ago. The Newport Beach man admitted to stabbing Bernstein, a 19-year-old gay, Jewish man, multiple times in 2018, but pleaded not guilty to murder with an enhancement for a hate crime.
Orange County prosecutor Jennifer Walker maintained to jurors that Woodward stabbed Bernstein, his former high school classmate, because he was gay, and buried his body at Borrego Park in Lake Forest.
“To dig a grave in that terrain, and bury and clean up and murder someone in an hour and half..that is not someone who is just going, ‘Oh..something happened and I need to figure it out.’ That is determined,” Walker said.
Bernstein, who was a college sophomore, was home visiting his family on winter break in January 2018 when he went missing after going with Woodward to a park in Lake Forest, California. Woodward picked Bernstein up from his parents’ home after connecting with him on social media.
Bernstein’s parents found his glasses, wallet and credit cards in his bedroom the next day when he missed a dentist appointment and wasn’t responding to texts or calls, prosecutors wrote in a trial brief.
Days later, Bernstein’s body was found buried at the park in a shallow grave.
The case took years to go to trial after questions were raised about Woodward’s mental state and following defense attorney changes. Woodward was deemed competent to stand trial in late 2022.
Woodward took the stand for several days and confessed to jurors that he stabbed Bernstein multiple times.
DNA evidence linked Woodward to the killing and his cellphone contained troves of anti-gay, antisemitic and hate group materials, authorities said.
“Now with the verdict in hand, we believe justice has been served and that Blaze’s memory will be honored through this outcome,” Pepper Bernstein said.
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