Six white former Mississippi law enforcement officers, who called themselves the “goon squad” for beating suspects, pleaded guilty Monday (Aug. 14) to state charges of torturing two innocent Black men in a racist assault, The Associated Press reports.

All the former officers admitted that on Jan. 24 they had no warrant when they kicked in the door and entered the house in Braxton, Rankin County where the victims, Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker, were living.

Although they lacked probable cause, the ex-officers handcuffed and arrested the two unarmed Black men, yelled racial slurs at them, assaulted the victims with a dildo, and punched, kicked, and tased the men.

During the ordeal, former Rankin County sheriff’s Deputy Hunter Elward removed a bullet from the chamber of his gun, forced the weapon into Jenkins’ mouth and pulled the trigger. The unloaded gun didn’t fire. When he pulled the trigger a second time, the gun fired a bullet that lacerated Jenkins’ tongue, broke his jaw and exited his neck.

The five other ex-officers are Rankin County sheriff’s Deputies Brett McAlpin, Christian Dedmon, Jeffrey Middleton and Daniel Opdyke, as well as former Richland Police Department Officer, Joshua Hartfield.

The torture session lasted for approximately 90 minutes. In the end, the disgraced officers planted drugs and a gun in the house and concocted false charges to conceal their crime.

State prosecutors presented several charges against the former officers, including aggravated assault, home invasion, obstruction of justice, hindering prosecution in the first degree and conspiracy to commit obstruction of justice/hindering prosecution, the Jackson, Mississippi Clarion-Ledger reported.

The U.S. Justice Department announced on Aug. 4 that all six officers pleaded guilty to multiple federal civil rights charges in connection to the same assault.

They agreed to the state prosecutor’s recommended sentence range of five to 30 years. The federal sentences are due to be handed down in mid-November.

Authorities said the motive for the racist attack was once commonplace for law enforcement officers and white supremacist groups during Jim Crow and Civil Rights-era Mississippi. The rogue officers wanted to force the two Black men out of the majority-white suburb of Jackson, which has one of the largest Black populations in the nation.

A White neighbor had complained that two Black men were staying at the home with a white woman. But it turned out that Parker was a childhood friend of the homeowner, Kristi Walley, who was paralyzed since she was 15. Parker was there to help her.

“I enjoyed the view of seeing the walk of shame. Head down, the disgust everybody felt for them and that they feel for themselves,” Parker said after the officers were led handcuffed into the courtroom, according to the AP. “I hope this is a lesson to everybody out there: Justice will be served.”