Lester Eugene Siler
Lester Eugene Siler, a convicted drug dealer in the United States, was beaten and tortured by Campbell County, Tennessee police during an interrogation at his home, during which officers attempted to coerce Siler to sign a consent form giving them permission to search his home without a warrant.
On July 8, 2004, police officers entered the house of Siler and tortured him using various methods, including applying electricity to his genitalia. Upon arrival, the officers asked his wife, Jenny, and son, Austin, to leave. Before the torture, however, Siler's wife set up an audio recorder which captured a large portion of the incident.
Five officers, Gerald David Webber, Samuel R. Franklin, Joshua Monday, Shayne Green, and William Carroll were convicted in federal court of the beatings and attempted cover-up. They received prison sentences ranging from 51 to 72 months.[1][2]
The events went largely unreported in American news media. Siler's civil suits filed at the federal and state level were both dismissed after he was jailed on a drug offense and his lawyers failed to notify a defense lawyer of a filing for an impermissibly long period of time, barring all possibility of recovering damages. Two of the officers were employed by Campbell County after their release, reflecting public sentiment in favor of their actions.[3]
References
- ^ Herzog, Herryn (July 15, 2005). "Four former Campbell deputies sentenced to prison for suspect abuse". WBIR TV-10.
- ^ http://www.justice.gov/usao/tne/civil_rights.html
- ^ Jamie Satterfield (2012-08-08). "Civil-rights lawsuits tossed in torture of Campbell drug dealer". Knoxville News Sentinel.
External links
- Audio stream of the recording. Here is the direct MMS URL for the stream:
mms://wms.scripps.com/knoxville/siler/siler.mp3. Note that this file is actually an ASF file with a misnamed MP3 filename extension, of which in turn contains the audio recording in the MP3 format. The raw (demuxed) MP3 audio of the recording is here available for download; mirrors: here, here and here. - Audio Recording.
- Revised transcript of the Siler recording by FBI Special Agent Joshua T. McKinney, Federal Bureau of Investigation, date of revised transcript: January 19, 2005; Case 3:05-cr-00013, Document 13, Filed July 1, 2005. Also available here and here.
- KnoxNews Archive.