BRIGHTON | Prosecutors have dismissed sentence enhancements against two Aurora police officers involved in the death of Elijah McClain ahead of a criminal trial scheduled to begin next month.
Attorneys with the Colorado Attorney General’s Office moved to set aside the crime-of-violence enhancements against officer Randy Roedema and former officer Jason Rosenblatt after a 17th Judicial District Court judge asked the office to explain the reasoning behind the enhancements at the request of defense attorneys.
Judge Mark Warner wrote in his ruling last week that the enhancements can be applied in the case of crimes resulting in “serious bodily injury or death” but said “there was some lack of clarity” in the indictment “concerning how the specific acts of these defendants would have caused death.”
Ultimately, prosecutors opted to set aside the enhancements in response to the district court’s request for a bill of particulars. Warner said defense attorneys opposed the move, reportedly describing it as “a veiled attempt to end-run the Court’s bill of particulars order,” but the judge granted the prosecution’s motion to dismiss the enhancements.
“Despite the objections filed by the defendants the court will order the dismissal of Count 4 relating to Mr. Roedema and Count 8 relating to Mr. Rosenblatt,” he wrote. “Here, the Court finds the prosecution has wide discretion in deciding the counts that are appropriate to proceed to trial on.”
Lawrence Pacheco, a spokesman for the Colorado Attorney General’s Office, declined to comment on the ruling. Attorneys representing Roedema and Rosenblatt did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
On the night of Aug. 24, 2019, officers Roedema, Rosenblatt and Nathan Woodyard confronted McClain as he was walking home from a store, tackling the 23-year-old, pinning him to the ground and choking him.
McClain was not suspected of any crime when he was stopped by police, who later said they were responding to a call regarding a suspicious person.
When Aurora Fire Rescue paramedics Jeremy Cooper and Peter Cichuniec arrived, they injected McClain with what investigators have determined was an overdose of the sedative drug ketamine.
McClain was declared brain dead and taken off life support less than a week after his encounter with police and paramedics.
In September 2021, a grand jury indicted the five first responders for their roles in McClain’s death. Roedema and Rosenblatt were charged with manslaughter, criminally-negligent homicide and second-degree assault. The assault charges carried sentence enhancements as crimes of violence.
Roedema and Rosenblatt’s jury trial on the charges of manslaughter, criminally-negligent homicide and second-degree assault is scheduled to begin Sept. 15.
Once again when you read the facts, those charges should be brought against the two defendants. If there is anything that is “unclear,” that’s what the trial is for, to put on evidence for all elements of the case. This was a decision for the jury. What a slap in the face of the family and all who want to see the APD brought to justice and encouraged to make real changes in training and recruitment. Seems like more of the same APD corruption and police dept. pressure.