DENVER | The third and final trial over the 2019 death of Elijah McClain after he was stopped by police in Aurora involves homicide and manslaughter charges against two paramedics. It’s a prosecution experts say enters largely uncharted legal territory by levying criminal charges against medical first responders.
McClain had been stopped and put into a neck hold by police that left him weakened when the paramedics arrived and injected him with the powerful sedative ketamine. The 23-year-old Black man went into cardiac arrest on his way to the hospital and was pronounced dead three days later.
Initially no one was charged because the coroner’s office could not determine exactly how McClain died. But in 2021, social justice protests over the 2020 murder of George Floyd drew renewed attention to McClain’s case, prompting an indictment against the paramedics and three officers.
Jury selection in the paramedics’ trial is set to begin Monday.
“What we saw three years ago, that put a huge spotlight on the police profession,” University of Miami criminologist Alex Piquero said, adding that the McClain case “has the potential to do that for paramedics and first responders.”
Aurora Fire Department paramedics Jeremy Cooper and Lt. Peter Cichuniec have pleaded not guilty.
Defense attorneys at a November court hearing indicated they plan to blame police for McClain’s death during a trial expected to last most of December. The defense attorneys did not return telephone calls or emails seeking comment on the charges the men face.
The case will be the first of several recent criminal charges against medical first responders to reach trial and could “set the bar” for prosecutors in future cases, said Douglas Wolfberg, a former emergency medicine instructor and founding partner of a Pennsylvania law firm representing emergency medical services workers.
“Society’s thinking about these things has changed and evolved, especially since George Floyd,” Wolfberg said. “Obviously there are political considerations. That’s not to deny Mr. McClain’s family the justice they are seeking.”
Cases pending elsewhere include paramedics in Illinois facing first-degree murder charges after a patient they strapped facedown to a stretcher suffocated, and an involuntary manslaughter charge against a nurse in California who continued to draw blood from an unresponsive patient while officers pinned him down.
“It’s exceedingly rare for EMS providers to be charged criminally related to providing inpatient care,” Wolfberg said. “That is normally a medical malpractice issue, a negligent case which is civil, and it’s rarely criminal. This breaks new ground.”
One of the police officers indicted in McClain’s death was convicted last month of the lesser charges he faced — homicide and third-degree assault — after defense attorneys sought to blame the paramedics. Two other officers were acquitted by jurors following trials that lasted for weeks.
Cooper and Cichuniec are charged with manslaughter, negligent homicide and several counts each of assault, all felonies. Their role in McClain’s death loomed large in the first officers’ trials.
Attorneys for one of the acquitted officers brought in a paid expert witness who were hired to work on the paramedics’ case by state prosecutors.
Dr. Nadia Iovettz-Tereshchenko, an emergency room doctor who has worked as a paramedic, said Cooper and Cichuniec’s actions fell significantly below the level of care expected. She testified that the paramedics stood back watching McClain from a distance as he was restrained by police, did not examine him before the ketamine injection and did not monitor him afterward.
Prosecution experts also testified during the earlier trials that the ketamine ultimately caused McClain’s death, with some saying the officer’s violent stop set contributing events into motion.
The amended coroner’s report, issued in 2021, found McClain died because he was given too much ketamine. However, forensic pathologist Stephen Cina noted the amount found in McClain’s blood was within the range normally considered safe.
McClain was stopped the night of Aug. 24, 2019, while walking home from a convenience store, listening to music and wearing a mask covering most of his face. The police stop quickly became physical after McClain, seemingly caught off guard, tried to keep walking. He was unarmed and had not been accused of committing any crime.
He was rendered briefly unconscious by an officer using a neck hold, prompting police to call for paramedics while officers restrained him on the ground.
Cooper and Cichuniec denied being told the neck hold had been applied, according to their indictment. Prior to the ketamine injection, they stood near McClain and didn’t speak to him or ask him anything before diagnosing him within about two minutes with “excited delirium.” They had been trained to treat the condition, which allegedly makes people hyper-aggressive, the document said.
Critics say the condition has been used to justify excessive force and some doctor’s groups reject excited delirium as a diagnosis.
In McClain’s case, prosecutors said the diagnosis was inaccurate because the paramedics didn’t adequately assess his symptoms. A 2021 report by experts hired by Aurora to review McClain’s death found he had not moved or made any sounds for more than a minute before being injected.
Cichuniec, supervisor of the Aurora Fire Department’s paramedics crew, asked medics working for a private ambulance on the scene to prepare the ketamine injection for McClain, the indictment said. Cooper injected him with 500 milligrams of ketamine, a dose appropriate for someone who weighed more than 200 pounds (90 kilograms), according to the indictment. McClain weighed only 143 pounds (65 kilograms).
Before the ketamine injection, body camera footage shows Cooper asking police if McClain spoke English and Officer Randy Roedema, the officer convicted in the case, responding: “He speaks English, but he’s, he’s definitely on something.”
Prosecutors in Roedema’s trial said using language like that, which suggested McClain had excited delerium, made the police officers complicit in the paramedics’ decision to give McClain ketamine.
Two days after McClain’s death, the Aurora officials put out a statement saying “a standard medication routinely utilized to reduce agitation was administered (to McClain) and reduced the exhibited anxiety.”
The killings of McClain, Floyd and others triggered a wave of legislation that put limits on the use of neck holds in more than two dozen states, including Colorado, which now also instructs paramedics not to give ketamine to people suspected of having excited delirium. The condition had been described in a since-withdrawn emergency physicians’ report as manifesting with symptoms including increased strength. Critics have called the diagnosis unscientific and rooted in racism.
The city of Aurora agreed in 2021 to pay $15 million to settle a lawsuit brought by McClain’s parents.
Finally, the next to the last chapter of the McClain’s in Aurora is happening. I can hardly wait for this story to end. It was always negative for the citizens of Aurora and just dragged on and on and on and..
I await the final chapter that will not hit or be reported by the Sentinel Blog. That’s when Mrs. McClain takes her millions of dollars and leaves Aurora where she can fade into the sunset. I can hardly wait for this but the black radicals will be saddened as they will have to find another cause to make life in Aurora unbearable for so many of us. I fear that it will not take them long to find a new cause as that is what radicals do.
McClain’s mistake was “WWB” (Walking while Black)
Paramedics often stand back while police apprehend and restrain a suspect.
Then the paramedics take it from there.
Thisounds like a mistaken overestimate of a patient’s weight.
And then inadequate monitoring of the patient after administration of the Ketamine.
Ah, the witch hunt continues. Just because something is a tragedy doesn’t make it criminal. Officer Roedema, poorly defended in court, is basically convicted for being the last to touch McClain. Basically, they expected Roedema to act as a doctor. Now, we go after the medics for what would be a medical mistake. Thank god. Now we can prosecute all the doctors and nurses in the thousands of medical mistakes that result in death. That will surely cause the medical people to be willing to jump right in to try to save you.
Let me explain something. Suspects who resist the police have been dying unexpectedly for many years. It was called “sudden in custody death” and was usually the result of a struggle where no excessive force or neck restraint was used. The medical people couldn’t tell us why they died. Although what Officer Chauvin did was obviously wrong, it is unlikely that he actually caused George Floyd’s death. George Floyd was yelling that he could not breathe even before he was removed from the car. He also was a long time drug user with drugs onboard. It will continue to happen. I just saw another one in the news. The people who fight the police often have drugs in their system or have neglected their bodies for years. Often, they are acting incoherently and struggle wildly. So, now, the police cannot afford to get into a struggle because they will be held to some higher standard of emergency medical personnel. Or, as in the recent cases, the prosectors will simply blame them for causing the death by the extended struggle.
There are many ridiculous arguments being forwarded by the public, the legislature, and even the prosecutors. For instance, the suspect is yelling that he cannot breathe while he continues to fight. Is an officer supposed to quit struggling with a violently resisting and often dangerous suspect because he yells that he can’t breathe? As an officer, or a jujitsu practitioner, I don’t want you to be able to breathe while you are uncontrolled and fighting me. After you are controlled, then I want to do what I can to protect your life. Another silly idea is the principle of minimum force, as required by the legislature. If I use minimum force, instead of necessary force, I give the resisting suspect more opportunity to get a weapon or my weapon. Therefore, I have to kill the suspect where I previously might have only caused some minor injury. My force has to be a little greater than that used by the suspect or the struggle goes on and becomes more dangerous to everyone. More officers are going to die because they were too gentle with the suspect.
Anyway, lots of uninformed, passionate people are driving narratives that increase the risk to all of the rest of us. We must return to personal accountability. If you fight the police, you create the risk. At the same time, we must improve the police training. I don’t mean bias training. That is not the problem. The police receive about half of the use of force training they should have before going out on the street. The police administrators simply lie to you about how well trained their officers are. At the same time, now, they are quick to charge the same officers they failed to train. They are more than willing to put them in harms way while they keep a low profile. They are not standing up to tell you how flawed the police reform bill is and how it endangers the public. Are you getting a feel for what some of the real problems are?