A police officer convicted of killing a Colorado man will find out if he will spend time behind bars

DENVER — A Colorado police officer convicted of killing Elijah McClain, a young Black man walking home from a store, is expected to learn Friday whether a judge will sentence him to prison or whether he will be placed on probation.

McClain's mother may also speak at the sentencing hearing.

Of the three officers charged in McClain's 2019 death, Randy Roedema was the only one found guilty and the highest-ranking officer to initially respond to the scene. A jury convicted the former Aurora officer in October of negligent homicide, which is a felony, and third-degree assault, which is a misdemeanor.

McClain's killing received little attention at the time, but gained renewed interest the following year as mass protests swept the country following the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. McClain's death became a rallying cry for critics of racial injustice in law enforcement.

In a separate trial, two paramedics were recently convicted of injecting 23-year-old McClain with an overdose of the sedative ketamine after police placed him in a neck hold. Sentencing will come later this year for the paramedics, who were trained to use ketamine to treat “excited delirium” – a controversial condition that some say is unscientific, rooted in racism and used to justify excessive force.

McClain was stopped by police after a 911 caller reported he looked suspicious. Another officer put his hands on McClain within seconds and began a struggle and restraint that lasted about 20 minutes before paramedics injected him with ketamine. Experts say the sedative ultimately killed McClain, who was already weakened by difficulty breathing while pinned down after inhaling vomit into his lungs.

For Roedema, negligent homicide, defined as killing someone by failing to recognize a substantial risk to their life, carries a probationary sentence of up to three years in prison. The assault conviction carries a probation term of up to two years in prison.

Judge Mark Warner, a former prosecutor who has been a judge for nearly two decades, will have to determine a fair sentence by weighing how this murder case compares to others he has seen in his career, former prosecutor George Brauchler said. A first conviction could lead to probation, but the judge must also take into account that Roedema was a uniformed police officer, who was given special authority and respect by society, and that a jury convicted him of taking a life, Brauchler said .

“I don't know how that person is going to get home that night,” said Brauchler, who prosecuted the 2012 Aurora theater shooting. “I think that would be very tough.”

Even if Warner decided to give Roedema probation, he could require him to first spend 90 days in jail as part of that sentence, Brauchler said.

Roedema's sentences for the assault and murder charges will likely be served concurrently, rather than consecutively for a longer sentence, because they involve the same acts. If Roedema is sent to prison, he would be eligible for parole within a year and likely to a halfway house sooner, according to prison rules, he said.

Roedema helped restrain McClain while paramedics administered the ketamine. He was often visible in the body camera footage shown to jurors over and over again, and he could be heard instructing others on how to restrain him.

The same jury that convicted Roedema acquitted former officer Jason Rosenblatt, whose lawyers insisted he was not close to McClain when the ketamine was injected.

Another jury acquitted Officer Nathan Woodyard a few weeks later after he testified that he had put McClain in a neck hold, briefly rendering him unconscious. Woodyard testified that he feared for his life after Roedema said McClain took one of their guns. According to prosecutors, the gun grab never took place.

Aurora Fire Rescue paramedics Jeremy Cooper and Peter Cichuniec were convicted last month. Cichuniec, the top officer, was found guilty of the most serious charge any of the first responders faced: misdemeanor second-degree assault. There is a mandatory prison sentence of five to 16 years.

In a statement following these final sentences, McClain's mother, Sheneen McClain, said that the fact that three of the five defendants were convicted was not justice, but only “a very small acknowledgment of responsibility in the justice system.”

“There were at least 20 people there the night my son was alive and talking before he was brutally murdered. The Aurora Colorado Police Department and Fire Department kept everyone else on their payroll because both departments lacked humanity and refused to budge on their inhumane protocols,” she said.

The paramedics' comments came a day later after a jury in Washington state acquitted three police officers of all criminal charges in the 2020 death of Manuel Ellis, a Black man who was shocked, beaten and held face down while he was begged for breath.

Candace McCoy, professor emeritus at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, doesn't see the recent acquittals there or in Colorado as a sign that the push for police reform is waning. Instead, she said it's a reflection of how difficult it is to convict police officers of crimes because jurors often give them the benefit of the doubt about how they act in emergency situations.

While it was rare to prosecute cases against law enforcement in the past, the fact that more of these cases are now being prosecuted is not enough to bring about police reforms, she said.

“The way to change and reform policing is to change the culture and the departments, and individual prosecutions will not do that,” McCoy said.