BRIGHTON, Colo. (AP) — Two Denver-area paramedics were convicted Friday in the 2019 killing of Elijah McClain, who was injected with an overdose of the sedative ketamine after police held him by the neck.
It was the final trial of the police and paramedics charged in the death of McClain, a 23-year-old black man whose case gained little attention until protests over the 2020 killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. An Aurora police officer was convicted of third-degree murder and assault earlier this year while two officers were acquitted. The case stands out because it is the first of several recent criminal prosecutions in the US against medical first responders to reach trial, potentially setting the bar for prosecutors in future cases.
A jury found Aurora Fire Rescue paramedics Jeremy Cooper and Peter Cichuniec guilty of criminally negligent homicide following a weeks-long trial in state district court. The jury also found Cichuniec guilty of one of two counts of second-degree assault. Cooper was found not guilty of assault. They could face years in prison.
Paramedics Jeremy Cooper, far left, and Peter Cichuniec, far right, enter the courthouse in Brighton, Colorado. AP
The decision was announced after two days of deliberations. When the jurors told the judge Friday afternoon that they were stuck on one of the charges, the judge told them to keep trying to reach a verdict.
Police arrested McClain as he was walking home from a convenience store on August 24, 2019, following a suspicious person complaint. After one officer said McClain reached for one officer’s gun — a claim disputed by prosecutors — another officer put him in the neck, temporarily knocking him unconscious. Officers also detained McClain before Cooper injected him with an overdose of ketamine. Cichuniec is a senior officer and said it was his decision to use ketamine.
Prosecutors said paramedics did not perform basic medical examinations on McClain, such as taking his pulse, before giving him ketamine. The dose was too much for someone his size — 140 pounds (64 kilograms), experts testified. Prosecutors said they also did not monitor McClain immediately after sedating him but instead left him lying on the ground, making it harder for him to breathe.
Police arrested Elijah McClain as he was walking home from a convenience store. via REUTERS
McClain’s plea captured on police body camera video, “I’m an introvert and I’m different,” drew the attention of protesters and crowds across the country.
In a statement released before the verdict, McClain’s mother, Sheneen, said that everyone present during her son’s police stop showed a lack of humanity.
“They cannot blame their job training for their indifference to evil or their participation in evil actions,” McClain wrote. “That’s entirely up to them. May all their souls rot in hell when the time comes.”
Defense attorneys argued that paramedics followed their training in administering ketamine to McClain after diagnosing him with “excited delirium,” a condition that some argue is unscientific and has been used to justify excessive force.
Sheneen McClain, Elijah’s mother, left court in October. AP
The decision came after a jury in Washington state acquitted three police officers of all criminal charges Thursday in the 2020 death of Manuel Ellis, a black man who was shocked, beaten and held face down on a Tacoma sidewalk as he pleaded for breath.
In the Colorado case, prosecutors said Cooper lied to investigators to try to cover up his actions, telling detectives that McClain was actively resisting when he decided to inject McClain with ketamine, even though body cameras showed McClain lying on the ground unconscious. It also disputes Cooper’s claims that McClain tried to escape from the police who arrested him — and that he took McClain’s pulse while bending over to give him an injection of ketamine, which others testified they did not see.
“He tried to cover up his reckless behavior,” Senior Assistant Attorney General Jason Slothouber told jurors in closing statements.
March following McClain’s death in 2020. AP
Cichuniec, who testified with Cooper this week, said paramedics are trained that they have to work quickly to treat excited delirium with ketamine so patients can be taken to a hospital for treatment. He also said they were told many times that it was a safe, effective drug and were not warned about the possibility of it killing anyone.
“We were taught that the medicine was safe and it wouldn’t kill them,” he testified.
The trial against the paramedics explores largely uncharted legal territory because it is rare for medical first responders to face criminal charges, experts say. It is the first of several recent cases in which criminal charges against medical first responders have reached trial and experts say it could set the bar for prosecutors in future cases.
Local authorities in 2019 decided against criminal charges because the coroner’s office could not determine exactly how McClain, a massage therapist, died. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis ordered state Attorney General Phil Weiser’s office to look again at the case in 2020 and a grand jury to indict the officers and paramedics in 2021.
Lt. Firefighter Peter Cichuniec testified this week. AP paramedic Jeremy Cooper was convicted on Friday. AP
The killings of McClain, Floyd and others sparked a wave of laws limiting the use of neck restraints in more than two dozen states. Colorado is now telling paramedics not to give ketamine to people suspected of having a controversial condition known as excited delirium, which has symptoms including increased strength and has been linked to racial bias against Black men.
When police stopped McClain, he was listening to music and wearing a mask that covered most of his face because he had a circulatory disorder. The police stop quickly turned physical after McClain, who appeared off guard, asked to be left alone. He was never accused of any crime.
The officers told investigators they took McClain down after hearing Officer Randy Roedema say, “He grabbed your gun.” Roedema later said Officer Jason Rosenblatt’s gun was the target.
Cooper, right, was one of the paramedics who injected McClain with ketamine. Reuters
Paramedics injected McClain with ketamine as Roedema – and another officer, who has not been charged – held him on the ground. McClain suffered a heart attack on the way to the hospital and died three days later.
Roedema was convicted earlier this month of the least serious of a series of charges he could face, which could lead to a sentence anywhere from probation to prison.
Rosenblatt and officer Nathan Woodyard were acquitted of all charges.
In the first two trials, the defense tried to blame the paramedics for McClain’s death. Prosecutors denied that McClain ever tried to grab the officer’s gun and that it was not visible on the body camera footage.
The city of Aurora in 2021 agreed to pay $15 million to settle a lawsuit brought by McClain’s parents.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
