In prison interviews, ex-Mississippi sheriff’s deputy Christian Dedmon detailed systemic abuse and illegal tactics by Rankin County deputies, including warrantless home entries, beatings, and seizing evidence to secure drug convictions. His accounts supported investigations revealing a two-decade history of violence by deputies, including a group known as the “Goon Squad.” The brutal practices persisted until at least 2023. Dedmon’s revelations raise concerns about wrongful convictions in numerous drug cases, yet the district attorney has been reluctant to review all affected convictions. Legal experts emphasize the necessity of reevaluating these cases, highlighting a duty to address justice failures.
In a series of interviews conducted from prison, a former sheriff’s deputy in Mississippi revealed for the first time how he and colleagues from his department frequently accessed homes without warrants, physically assaulted individuals to extract information, and unlawfully confiscated evidence that contributed to drug crime convictions.
His revelations support numerous findings from an investigation by The New York Times and Mississippi Today, which unveiled a two-decade period of terror inflicted by Rankin County sheriff’s deputies, including a group that referred to themselves as the “Goon Squad.” These statements also provide insight into the tactics used by the deputies and the range of their violent and illegal actions.
The former deputy, Christian Dedmon, who previously led the narcotics division of the department, stated in emails and phone interviews with Mississippi Today that drug raids took place nearly every week for years in suburban Rankin County, just outside Jackson.
He described instances where deputies consistently subjected suspects to brutality and humiliation in order to extract information during these raids. Additionally, he noted that they often confiscated evidence without a warrant, raising concerns about potential wrongful convictions in numerous narcotics cases linked to the raids.
For certain raids, he said, the deputies would falsely assert that emergency situations justified a warrantless search; in others, they would inaccurately claim that evidence was visible without entering the premises.
He mentioned that the frequency of deputies entering homes without warrants had become so alarming that a senior detective warned him in 2022 that the district attorney’s office had taken notice and ordered them to stop.
The violent raids persisted until at least 2023, when Mr. Dedmon and five other officers forcefully entered a home without a warrant and subsequently beat and tortured two Black men, Eddie Parker and Michael Jenkins. One deputy shoved a gun into Mr. Jenkins’s mouth and shot him, causing severe injury and prompting a federal investigation. Mr. Dedmon and the other officers pled guilty last year and received prison sentences.
“I lived a lie for long enough,” Mr. Dedmon stated, who is currently serving a 40-year sentence. “I owe the truth to my daughter, to everyone in Rankin County, and to law enforcement as a whole.”
District Attorney John K. Bramlett Jr., known as Bubba, has chosen not to disclose details regarding how his office is reviewing drug cases for potential wrongful convictions.
However, reporters uncovered dozens of pending drug indictments that were dismissed, with some citing the unavailability of Goon Squad deputies as witnesses.
Local defense attorneys reported that the district attorney’s office is not assessing cases where defendants entered guilty pleas, thus excluding a significant majority of drug cases involving the deputies. Mr. Dedmon estimated that there were hundreds of warrantless home search incidents in recent years.
In their guilty pleas, six law enforcement officers, five of whom were deputies, confessed to unlawfully breaking into a residence and assaulting Mr. Parker and Mr. Jenkins. Prosecutors detailed how the officers attempted to cover up their actions by placing a firearm at the crime scene, destroying surveillance footage, and using seized drugs from another case to falsely implicate their victims.
Mr. Dedmon asserted that the actions taken by officers that night were extreme. He noted that while most drug raids targeted individuals suspected of drug-related activities, violence and a readiness to bypass legal protocols for home entries were prevalent.
Frequently, Mr. Dedmon explained, the deputies executed a “buy bust,” where an informant would purchase drugs inside a residence and “then we would force our way in as they exited.”
He indicated that once deputies secured a home, their protocol was to obtain a search warrant from a judge and wait at the location until they received authorization to collect evidence. However, he noted, this seldom occurred.
Instead, he suggested, deputies would promptly initiate their searches and, in their subsequent reports, cite “exigent” circumstances that the U.S. Supreme Court allows for warrantless searches. The court has ruled that warrants are unnecessary if officers believe an informant’s safety is at risk, if a suspect might destroy evidence, or if they encounter similar emergencies.
Eve Brensike Primus, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School and director of the Public Defender Training Institute, noted that if crucial evidence obtained in a warrantless drug raid is a key component of a case, “that would constitute a substantial violation of the Fourth Amendment, potentially resulting in reversal on appeal.”
The Fourth Amendment aims to prevent arbitrary and intrusive police searches by enforcing a warrant requirement, she explained. “We expect law enforcement to seek a warrant from a magistrate or judge prior to searching a residence, due to the privacy of homes, and we desire judicial oversight on the officer’s likelihood of probable cause beforehand.”
Prior reporting by The Times and Mississippi Today identified 17 instances where victims and witnesses alleged misconduct by Rankin County deputies, often involving the same officers charged in the Parker and Jenkins case. Some recounted experiences of being beaten, choked, or having firearms forcibly placed in their mouths until they confessed. One individual claimed deputies forced a stick down his throat until he vomited, while another said they utilized a blowtorch to affix metal to his skin.
Mr. Dedmon mentioned that he and several other deputies learned their methods from Brett McAlpin, a veteran narcotics investigator within the department, who federal prosecutors described as shaping officers “into the goons they became.” He stated that Mr. McAlpin was responsible for writing many of the raid reports and instructed deputies on how to employ violence and humiliation to extract information from suspects involved in drug crimes.
“The objective was to create chaos to deter similar behavior in Rankin County,” Mr. Dedmon recalled. “That was their approach to solving cases and preventing drug sales within the community.”
He acknowledged that the violence was unjustifiable, but he admired Mr. McAlpin, who is currently serving a 27-year sentence in connection with the Parker and Jenkins case.
“He was the first person I witnessed destroy people’s property purely out of disdain for their lifestyle,” Mr. Dedmon noted in an email. “Regrettably, I began to believe it was appropriate behavior!”
Mr. Dedmon claimed it was Mr. McAlpin who relayed a warning from a prosecutor in the district attorney’s office instructing that “the warrantless entries had to come to an end.” According to Mr. Dedmon, this warning was personally directed at him, as conveyed by Mr. McAlpin. “He mentioned to me that changes were afoot at the D.A.’s office,” Mr. Dedmon recalled.
In a formal statement, Jason Dare, the attorney for the Sheriff’s Department, asserted that Mr. Dedmon’s comments imply “that investigators from the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department do not obtain search warrants for residential searches. Such a sweeping claim against our investigators is unfounded, defamatory, and can easily be disproven using publicly accessible records.”
In 2023, while probing allegations concerning the Goon Squad, reporters from Mississippi Today and The Times requested documentation related to nine raids by the unit. The department failed to supply the requested warrants and redirected reporters to the district attorney’s office, which opted not to disclose any records.
Mr. Dare maintained that Mr. Dedmon’s remarks to Mississippi Today reveal that the former narcotics investigator “acknowledged he was aware of right and wrong and confessed to falsifying reports for the Sheriff’s Department, both indicating that the training and policies of this department equipped him to properly and lawfully execute his duties. Assuming these statements are accurately reflected, they demonstrate that Mr. Dedmon chose to engage in criminal activities and is imprisoned as a consequence.”
Krissy Nobile, director of the Mississippi Office of Capital Post-Conviction Counsel, emphasized that Mr. Dedmon’s comments clearly indicate that Rankin drug cases require careful review for potential wrongful convictions.
“These offenders controlled the very institution meant to investigate these grave offenses, leaving victims with no avenue for redress,” she remarked. “Fortunately, post-conviction proceedings allow attorneys to revisit cases when our institutions fail — particularly when the scope of failure is as significant as this.”
She stated that her office is prepared to undertake this important task and would require $400,000 in additional funding from the Mississippi Legislature to recruit a new investigator and part-time attorneys to assess the cases.
Matt Steffey, a law professor at Mississippi College, stated that prosecutors are obligated to pursue justice, rather than merely convictions, and have a duty to investigate instances of possible wrongful convictions, “especially in situations as severe, profound, and well-documented as those in the Goon Squad cases.”
The Mississippi attorney general’s office, which prosecuted the Goon Squad cases alongside the Justice Department, also has the jurisdiction to review these cases.
However, MaryAsa Lee, the communications director, reported that the office is not currently reviewing any cases.
Peter Neufeld, co-founder of the Innocence Project nonprofit, asserted that the district attorney “bears a constitutional and ethical responsibility to inform every defendant of any conviction where these officers were involved in either the arrest or prosecution.”
This has not yet occurred, according to lawyers representing several defendants.
Mr. Neufeld explained that the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Brady v. Maryland mandates that prosecutors disclose any evidence that could potentially exonerate a defendant, even if such evidence emerges post-conviction.
“I have been involved in numerous cases where prosecutors informed hundreds of convicted defendants of misconduct far less severe than that attributed to the Goon Squad,” he noted.