The case was the last of three trials that included convictions against one officer and acquittals of two others in McClain’s 2019 killing
BRIGHTON, Colo. (AP) — Two Denver-area paramedics were convicted Friday for giving a fatal overdose of the sedative ketamine to Elijah McClain in 2019 — a jury verdict that experts said could have a chilling effect on first responders around the country.
The case involving the 23-year-old Black man’s death was the first among several recent criminal prosecutions against
The verdict was announced after two days of deliberations. When jurors told the judge Friday afternoon they were stuck on one of the charges, the judge told them to keep trying to reach a verdict.
Police stopped McClain while he was walking home from a convenience store on Aug. 24, 2019, following a suspicious person complaint. After an officer said McClain reached for an officer’s gun — a claim disputed by prosecutors — another officer put him in a neck hold that rendered him temporarily unconscious. Officers also pinned down McClain before Cooper injected him with an overdose of ketamine. Cichuniec was the senior officer and said it was his decision to use ketamine.
Prosecutors said the paramedics did not conduct basic medical checks of McClain, such as taking his pulse, before giving him the ketamine. The dose was too much for someone of his size — 140 pounds (64 kilograms), experts testified. Prosecutors say they also did not monitor McClain immediately after giving him the sedative but instead left him lying on the ground, making it harder to breathe.
McClain’s pleading words captured on police body camera video, “I’m an introvert and I’m different,” struck a chord with protesters and people around the country.
In a statement released prior to the verdict, McClain’s mother said that everyone present during the police stop of her son displayed a lack of humanity.
“They can not blame their job training for their indifference to evil or their participation in an evil action,” McClain wrote. “That is completely on them. May all of their souls rot in hell when their time comes.”
Paramedics Jeremy Cooper, third from right, and Peter Cichuniec, back left, enter the Adams County, Colo., Justice Center, Friday, Dec. 22, 2023, in Brighton, Colo. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
Defense attorneys argued that the paramedics followed their training in giving ketamine to McClain after diagnosing him with “excited delirium,” a disputed condition some say is unscientific and has been used to justify excessive force.
The verdicts came after a jury in Washington state cleared three police officers of all criminal charges on Thursday in the 2020 death of Manuel Ellis, a Black man who was shocked, beaten and restrained face-down on a Tacoma sidewalk as he pleaded for breath.
In the Colorado case, the prosecution 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 the body camera showed McClain lying on the ground unconscious. It also disputed Cooper’s claim that McClain tried to get away from police holding him down — and that he took McClain’s pulse as he bent down to give him the shot of ketamine, which others testified they did not see.
“He’s trying to cover up the recklessness of his conduct,” Senior Assistant Attorney General Jason Slothouber told jurors in closing statements.
Cichuniec, who testified along with Cooper this week, said paramedics were trained that they had to work quickly to treat excited delirium with ketamine and said they were told numerous times that it was a safe, effective drug and were not warned about the possibility of it killing anyone.
Colorado now tells paramedics not to give ketamine to people suspected of having the controversial condition, which has symptoms including increased strength and has been associated with racial bias against Black men.
When the police stopped McClain, a massage therapist, he was listening to music and wearing a mask that covered most of his face because he had a blood circulation disorder. The police stop quickly became physical after McClain, seemingly caught off guard, asked to be left alone. He had not been accused of committing any crime.
The case’s prominence means the specter of criminal charges and accompanying lawsuits over emergency care will be a concern for paramedics going forward, said Arizona State University law professor James G. Hodge, Jr.
It could prompt them to better document what police tell them about people needing treatment and to ask doctors to sign off before paramedics use life-saving but potentially harmful treatments on patients, he said.
“The national coverage of the cases against these paramedics unquestionably influences practices in real-time,” Hodge said.
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