Lester Eugene Siler, a convicted drug dealer in the United States, was beaten and tortured by
Campbell County, Tennessee
Campbell County is a county in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is located on the state's northern border in East Tennessee. As of the 2020 census, its population was 39,272. Its county seat is Jacksboro. Campbell County is included in the Kno ...
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.
In 2016, a jury trial resulted in a $115,000 award to Siler. This was appealed by Siler for being inadequately low, but the
Tennessee Court of Appeals
The Tennessee Court of Appeals (in case citation, Tenn. Ct. App.) was created in 1925 by the Tennessee General Assembly as an intermediate appellate court to hear appeals in civil cases from the Tennessee state trial courts. Appeals of judgments m ...
upheld the verdict.
References
External links
Audio stream of the recording.Here is the direct
MMS MMS may refer to:
Science and technology Network communication protocols
* Multimedia Messaging Service for mobile phones
* Microsoft Media Server, a content-streaming protocol (mms://)
* Manufacturing Message Specification for real time proces ...
URL
A Uniform Resource Locator (URL), colloquially termed as a web address, is a reference to a web resource that specifies its location on a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it. A URL is a specific type of Uniform Resource Identifie ...
for the stream:
mms://wms.scripps.com/knoxville/siler/siler.mp3
. Note that this file is actually an
ASF
ASF may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* Alabama Shakespeare Festival, a drama festival
* ''Asimov's Science Fiction'', a U.S.-based English-language science fiction magazine containing SF stories
Science and technology
Biological
* A ...
file with a misnamed
MP3 filename extension
A filename extension, file name extension or file extension is a suffix to the name of a computer file (e.g., .txt, .docx, .md). The extension indicates a characteristic of the file contents or its intended use. A filename extension is typically d ...
, of which in turn contains the audio recording in the MP3 format. The raw (
demuxed) MP3 audio of the recording i
here available for download mirrors
hereherean
here
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 availabl
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here.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Siler, Lester
Living people
American torture victims
Corruption in the United States
Police brutality in the United States
Crimes in Tennessee
Year of birth missing (living people)