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 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 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Origin ...

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
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an
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
here
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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)