- Lester Eugene Siler
Lester Eugene Siler, a convicted drug dealer, 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 Lester Siler and tortured him using various methods, including applying electricity to his genitalia. Upon arrival, the officers asked his wife Jenny and son 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.cite news
url=http://www.wbir.com/news/archive.aspx?storyid=27204
publisher="WBIR TV-10"
title=Four former Campbell deputies sentenced to prison for suspect abuse
date=July 15, 2005
first=Herryn
last=Herzog]The events went largely unreported in American news media.
References
External links
* [http://wms.scripps.com/knoxville/siler/siler.mp3 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 misnamedMP3 filename extension , of which in turn contains the audio recording in the MP3 format.
* The raw (demuxed) MP3 audio of the recording is [http://www.plunder.com/Police-Torture-and-Sexually-Assault-Peaceful-Man-download-60717.htm here available for download.]
* [http://www.endcorruption.org/siler.html Audio Recording.]
* [http://web.knoxnews.com/pdf/silertranscript.pdf 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 [http://www.thelibertypapers.org/files/silertranscript.pdf here] and [http://www.endcorruption.org/silertranscript.pdf here.]
* [http://piratenews.org/KnoxNews-com-torture-archive.html KnoxNews Archive.]
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