Paramedic sentencing in Elijah McClain’s death caps trials that led to 3 convictions

DENVER — Nearly five years after Elijah McClain died following a police stop in which he was placed in a neckhold and injected with the powerful sedative ketamine, three of the five Denver-area first responders charged in the black man’s death have been convicted.

Experts say the convictions would have been unheard of before 2020, when the killing of George Floyd led to a nationwide reckoning over racist policing and deaths in police custody.

But McClain’s mother, Sheneen McClain, said justice has not yet been served. She has previously said the two acquitted Aurora police officers, as well as other firefighters and police at the scene, were complicit in the murder of her 23-year-old son and that they escaped justice.

‘I wait for heaven to pass judgment on everyone. Because I know that heaven will not miss its mark,” she told The Associated Press.

She plans to speak Friday at a sentencing hearing in suburban Denver, where Jeremy Cooper, a former Aurora Fire Rescue paramedic, faces up to three years in prison. He was convicted of negligent homicide in December.

Cooper’s sentencing hearing concludes a series of trials that spanned seven months and resulted in the convictions of a police officer and two paramedics. The paramedics’ conviction sent shockwaves through the ranks of EMTs across the country due to the rarity of criminal charges against medical professionals in their roles, according to experts.

McClain’s name became a rallying cry in the protests against racial injustice in police that swept the US in 2020.

“Without the reckoning over criminal justice and the way in which people of color suffer at much higher rates from the use of force and violence by police, it is very unlikely that anything would have come of this, that there would have been any charges, let alone convictions,” the spokesperson said. David Harris, law professor at the University of Pittsburgh and expert on racial profiling.

Harris added that the acquittals of the two officers after weeks of trials were not surprising because juries are often reluctant to assess the actions of police and other first responders.

“It’s still very difficult to convict,” he said.

The same judge who will preside over Friday’s hearing sentenced former paramedic Peter Cichuniec in March to five years in prison for criminally negligent homicide and second-degree assault, the most serious of the charges all first responders face. It was the shortest sentence allowed by law.

Earlier, Judge Mark Warner sentenced officer Randy Roedema to 14 months in prison for murder and negligent assault.

Prosecutors initially declined to file charges in McClain’s death because an autopsy did not reveal how he died. But Democratic Gov. Jared Polis ordered the investigation reopened after the 2020 protests against police brutality.

The second autopsy revealed that McClain died because he was given an injection of ketamine after being forcibly restrained.

Sheneen McClain does not think it is logical that officer Nathan Woodyard, who arrested her son and held him by the neck, was acquitted, while officer Roedema received a lighter sentence than paramedic Cichuniec. She believes the paramedics’ role was to cover up what police did to her son.

She plans to address the court at Friday’s sentencing hearing.

“I raised him alone and I will continue to be there for my son regardless of whether anyone listens to me or not,” she said.

Since the killings of Floyd, McClain and others put a spotlight on deaths in police custody, many departments, paramedic units and those who train them have reexamined how they treat suspects. However, it could take years to gather enough evidence to show whether these efforts are working, said Candace McCoy, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

Cooper injected McClain with ketamine after police stopped him while he was walking home. Officers later referred to a report of a suspicious person. McClain was not armed nor was he accused of breaking any laws.

Medical experts said that by the time McClain was given the sedative, he was already in a weakened state due to restraint that temporarily rendered him unconscious.

He went into cardiac arrest on the way to the hospital and died three days later.

Cooper’s attorneys did not immediately respond to phone messages and emails seeking comment on the sentencing.

Since McClain’s death, the Colorado Health Department has ordered paramedics not to give ketamine to people suspected of inducing delirium, which a now-retracted emergency room report described as showing symptoms including increased strength . A medical group has called it an unscientific definition rooted in racism.

The protests against McClain and Floyd also ushered in a wave of state legislation to restrict the use of neck restraints known as carotid restraints, which cut off circulation, and chokeholds, which cut off breathing. At least 27 states, including Colorado, have exceeded some limit on the practice. Only two had bans before Floyd was killed.

According to MiDian Holmes, a racial justice advocate who attended the trials of the first responders, the change is not coming soon enough.

“The message is that Elijah’s life mattered, but it didn’t matter enough,” Holmes said.