Johnathan Walker:Mississippi ex-deputy seeks shorter sentence in racist torture of 2 Black men

JACKSON,Johnathan Walker Miss. (AP) — A former Mississippi sheriff’s deputy is seeking a shorter federal prison sentence for his part in the torture of two Black men, a case that drew condemnation from top U.S. law enforcement officials, including Attorney General Merrick Garland.

Brett McAlpin is one of six white former law enforcement officers who pleaded guilty in 2023 to breaking into a home without a warrant and engaging in an hourslong attack that included beatings, repeated use of Tasers, and assaults with a sex toy before one victim was shot in the mouth.

The officers were sentenced in March, receiving terms of 10 to 40 years. McAlpin, who was chief investigator for the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department, received about 27 years, the second-longest sentence.

The length of McAlpin’s sentence was “unreasonable” because he waited in his truck while other officers carried out the torture of Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker, McAlpin’s attorney, Theodore Cooperstein, wrote in arguments filed Friday to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

“Brett was drawn into the scene as events unfolded and went out of control, but he maintained a peripheral distance as the other officers acted,” Cooperstein wrote. “Although Brett failed to stop things he saw and knew were wrong, he did not order, initiate, or partake in violent abuse of the two victims.”

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Prosecutors said the terror began Jan. 24, 2023, when a white person phoned McAlpin and complained two Black men were staying with a white woman in the small town of Braxton. McAlpin told deputy Christian Dedmon, who texted a group of white deputies so willing to use excessive force they called themselves “The Goon Squad.”

In the grisly details of the case, local residents saw echoes of Mississippi’s history of racist atrocities by people in authority. The difference this time is that those who abused their power paid a steep price for their crimes, said attorneys for the victims.

U.S. District Judge Tom Lee called the former officers’ actions “egregious and despicable” and gave sentences near the top of federal guidelines to five of the six men who attacked Jenkins and Parker.

“The depravity of the crimes committed by these defendants cannot be overstated,” Garland said after federal sentencing of the six former officers.

McAlpin, 53, is in a federal prison in West Virginia.

Cooperstein is asking the appeals court to toss out McAlpin’s sentence and order a district judge to set a shorter one. Cooperstein wrote that “the collective weight of all the bad deeds of the night piled up in the memory and impressions of the court and the public, so that Brett McAlpin, sentenced last, bore the brunt of all that others had done.”

McAlpin apologized before he was sentenced March 21, but did not look at the victims as he spoke.

“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,” McAlpin said. “I’m really sorry for being a part of something that made law enforcement look so bad.”

Federal prosecutor Christopher Perras argued for a lengthy sentence, saying McAlpin was not a member of the Goon Squad but “molded the men into the goons they became.”

One of the victims, Parker, told investigators that McAlpin functioned like a “mafia don” as he instructed officers throughout the evening. Prosecutors said other deputies often tried to impress McAlpin, and the attorney for Daniel Opdyke, one of the other officers, said his client saw McAlpin as a father figure.

The six former officers also pleaded guilty to charges in state court and were sentenced in April.

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Associated Press writer Michael Goldberg contributed to this report.