A new lawsuit accuses Rankin County prosecutors of refusing to release public records that could play a role in reversing wrongful convictions resulting from criminal acts by a “Goon Squad” of deputies, many of whom are serving decades in federal prison.
For a generation, Rankin County Sheriff’s Department deputies, some of whom called themselves the “Goon Squad,” used “torture, violence, and other abusive practices to coerce confessions and extract or manufacture evidence for criminal cases prosecuted primarily by the Rankin County District Attorney’s Office,” the lawsuit alleges.
The ACLU of Mississippi and the Center for Constitutional Rights filed the lawsuit Thursday in Rankin County Chancery Court.
“Due to that misconduct, the Goon Squad was responsible for profound suffering by community members, including numerous wrongful convictions,” says the lawsuit, which represents one side of a legal argument.
The lawsuit cites reporting by Mississippi Today and The New York Times, which included revelations from former Rankin County deputy Christian Dedmon about how he and others in his department regularly entered homes without warrants, beat people to get information and illegally seized evidence that helped convict people of drug crimes.
His statements corroborated many aspects of the publications’ investigation that uncovered a two-decade reign of terror by Rankin County sheriff’s deputies, including those who called themselves the “Goon Squad.” Dedmon’s statements also shed new light on the deputies’ tactics and the scope of their violent and illegal behavior.
In 2023, Dedmon and five other officers barged into a home without a warrant and then beat and tortured two Black men, Eddie Parker and Michael Jenkins. One of the deputies shoved a gun in Jenkins’ mouth and shot him, shattering his jaw. To conceal their crimes, the deputies destroyed surveillance footage, planted false evidence and lied to investigators.
After a state and federal investigation, Dedmon and the other officers pleaded guilty and were sentenced to federal prison in 2024.
This combination of photos shows, from top left, former Rankin County sheriff’s deputies Hunter Elward, Christian Dedmon, Brett McAlpin, Jeffrey Middleton, Daniel Opdyke and former Richland police officer Joshua Hartfield appearing at the Rankin County Circuit Court in Brandon, Miss., Monday, Aug. 14, 2023. The six white former Mississippi law officers pleaded guilty to state charges on Monday for torturing two Black men in a racist assault that ended with a deputy shooting one victim in the mouth. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)Soon after Dedmon’s statements were published by Mississippi Today and The Times on Dec. 23, the civil rights organizations filed a public records request with the Rankin County District Attorney’s Office related to actions taken in response to the Goon Squad’s abuses. District Attorney Bubba Bramlett denied their request.
“Given the documented and admitted misconduct of multiple Rankin County officers, which spans the course of two decades, the lack of transparency is deeply troubling,” said Ayanna Hill, a racial justice staff attorney with the ACLU of Mississippi. “Extraordinary measures should not be required to obtain records that, by law, belong to the public.”
The lawsuit asks the court to compel the district attorney to release a list of cases involving Goon Squad officers, actions taken in response to those revelations and communications between prosecutors and those officers.
The District Attorney’s office did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication of this story.
In a March 2024 statement to Mississippi Today, Bramlett said his office conducted an “extensive review to identify any and all cases in which these officers were involved.” He said his office dismissed those indicted cases and didn’t go forward with cases where “the integrity of the investigation may have been compromised.”
Mississippi Today found dozens of drug cases dismissed in the wake of the 2023 Goon Squad arrests. Some of these dismissals cited the unavailability of those deputies, who are incarcerated, as witnesses. Bramlett’s office wouldn’t divulge any details of its review, including how many cases have been dismissed and how far back his review went.
Rankin County District Attorney Bubba Bramlett Credit: Courtesy of DA Bramlett's websiteAccording to local defense lawyers, the district attorney’s office is not reviewing cases where defendants pleaded guilty, ruling out a vast majority of drug cases involving the deputies. Dedmon estimated deputies conducted hundreds of home search break-ins without warrants in recent years.
When the civil rights organizations asked for a list of all the cases that Goon Squad officers had been involved in over the past four years, Bramlett’s office responded that it had no such list.
“The Rankin County District Attorney’s Office prosecuted and convicted people with the Goon Squad’s help. It should be eager to provide the public with information about what it’s doing to address,” said Terry Ding, a staff attorney with the ACLU State Supreme Court Initiative. “But instead, it is unlawfully withholding all of its records except one self-serving statement to the press.”
Ding said that the public “has a right to know how their public officials respond to cases of severe police misconduct.”
Center for Constitutional Rights Justice Fellow and attorney Korbin Felder said in a press release in the wake of Rankin County’s largest law enforcement scandal, “the District Attorney’s office should have created a transparent process of disclosing records and reviewing all cases involving these officers.
“Rather than providing the citizens of Rankin County and the victims of law enforcement abuse the transparency and accountability they deserve, the District Attorney’s office continues to insist that the public and the victims are not entitled to such,” Felder said.
The lawsuit says Bramlett’s office had “a legal duty to disclose misconduct by those officers to the people being prosecuted as well as those convicted.”
Peter Neufeld, co-founder of the nonprofit Innocence Project, said the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1963 decision in Brady v. Maryland requires prosecutors to disclose any evidence that might clear a defendant, even if the evidence arises after that person’s conviction.
The lawsuit in Rankin County cites the case of Ron Shinstock, who is serving a 40-year prison sentence after he was convicted in part by the testimony of Chief Inspector Brett McAlpin, who federal prosecutors described as the “ringleader” for the 2023 attack on Jenkins and Parker.
McAlpin led a violent raid of Shinstock’s home, holding his children at gunpoint and forcing him to strip naked in his backyard. According to the lawsuit, McAlpin and other deputies beat him, threatened him with sexual abuse and told him he would be raped in prison. Shinstock’s friend was reportedly beaten so badly that he bled from his ears.
In emails and phone calls, Dedmon delineated the drug raids that occurred in Rankin County almost every week for years.
He said deputies regularly brutalized and humiliated suspects to get them to share information during the raids. And he said they often seized evidence without a legally required warrant, raising questions about possible wrongful convictions in hundreds of narcotics cases stemming from the raids.
For some raids, Dedmon said, the deputies would falsely describe emergency circumstances that gave them cover for searching without a warrant. For others, they would falsely claim that evidence was in plain sight, he said.
Dedmon said deputies were entering homes without warrants so often that in 2022 McAlpin passed on a warning from a prosecutor in the district attorney’s office demanding that “the warrantless entries had to stop.” The warning was specifically aimed at him, according to what McAlpin told him, Dedmon recalled. “He said to me that times are changing at the D.A.’s office.”
The lawsuit cited Dedmon’s remark, saying this information suggests the office knew of this “massive misconduct” but failed to inform the public or those arrested by Goon Squad officers.
“To this day, neither criminal defendants nor the public have been informed of the full scope and gravity of the Goon Squad’s misconduct,” according to the lawsuit.
In 2023, while investigating allegations against the Goon Squad, reporters for Mississippi Today and The Times sought copies of warrants related to nine raids by the unit. The department did not provide the warrants and referred reporters to the district attorney’s office, which declined to release any documentation.
Jason Dare, the lawyer for the Sheriff’s Department, has said that Dedmon’s remarks insinuate “that investigators with the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department do not procure search warrants for residential searches. Such a generalized accusation against our investigators is false, defamatory and easily disproven through readily available public records.”
Dare said Dedmon’s statements to Mississippi Today show the former narcotics investigator “admits that he knew right from wrong and admits to falsifying reports to the Sheriff’s Department, both of which show that the training and policies of this department taught him how to legally and properly perform his duties. Assuming these statements are accurately reported, they show that Dedmon made the choice to commit criminal acts and is incarcerated as a result.”
Dare said the sheriff “has remained committed to the safety and protection of Rankin County citizens.”
Krissy Nobile, director of the Mississippi Office of Capital Post-Conviction Counsel, had volunteered her office to help review past Goon Squad cases to determine what, if any, wrongful convictions took place.
That offer still stands, Nobile told Mississippi Today: “Our office specializes in post-conviction.”
Meanwhile, Shinstock is scheduled to be released in 2056, just before his 82nd birthday. “I lost my family, I lost my home,” he said. “I lost my life.”
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