\n<\/p>\n
A Colorado court reversed homicide convictions against two paramedics on Thursday in the 2019 death of Elijah McClain, a Black man who was pinned down by police and injected with a fatal dose of ketamine.<\/p>\n
McClain\u2019s final words \u2013 \u201cI can\u2019t breathe\u201d \u2013 foreshadowed those of George Floyd a year later in Minneapolis, and the Colorado man\u2019s name became part of the rallying cries for social justice that swept the US in 2020.<\/p>\n
The appeals court ordered new trials for Aurora fire rescue paramedics Jeremy Cooper and Peter Cichuniec. McClain, 23, had been forcibly restrained and put in a neck hold by police, who stopped him in response to a suspicious person complaint as the massage therapist walked home from a convenience store in the Denver suburb in 2019.<\/p>\n
Criminal charges against paramedics and emergency medical technicians involved in police custody cases are rare. As McClain\u2019s death and others raised questions about the use of ketamine to subdue struggling suspects, this prosecution sent shock waves through the ranks of first responders across the US.<\/p>\n
New trials in the case will return the issue to the spotlight, and that could make first responders think twice when responding to calls involving people in police custody, said Alex Piquero, a criminologist at the University of Miami.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt 11 o\u2019clock tonight when they\u2019re on a call, and the circumstances are the same, is this going to influence their behavior?\u201d Piquero asked. \u201cIt may not be the first thing that comes into their heads, but it\u2019s going to be there.\u201d<\/p>\n
A jury in 2023 found Cooper and Cichuniec guilty of criminally negligent homicide after a weeks-long trial in state district court. The jurors also found Cichuniec guilty of second-degree felony assault.<\/p>\n
Cichuniec received five years in prison, but was released early from prison in 2024 after a judge reduced his sentence to four years of probation. Cooper avoided prison and was sentenced to 14 months in jail with work release and probation.<\/p>\n
The appeals court upheld Cichuniec\u2019s assault conviction, but faulted the instructions given to jurors with respect to the criminally negligent homicide charges before they deliberated. Thursday\u2019s ruling sends their cases back to a lower court for a new trial on that charge.<\/p>\n
Phil Weiser, the Colorado attorney general, will appeal Thursday\u2019s decision, a spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBringing these cases to trial was the right thing to do for justice, for Elijah McClain, and for healing in the Aurora community,\u201d Weiser said in a statement. \u201cThe attorney general\u2019s office is committed to defending these convictions through the appeals process.\u201d<\/p>\n
An Aurora police officer was convicted of homicide and third degree assault in McClain\u2019s death, while two other officers were acquitted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Colorado court reversed homicide convictions against two paramedics on Thursday in the 2019 death of Elijah McClain, a Black man who was pinned down by police and injected with a fatal dose of ketamine. McClain\u2019s final words \u2013 \u201cI can\u2019t breathe\u201d \u2013 foreshadowed those of George Floyd a year later in Minneapolis, and the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50078,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[14726,160,9864,14805,3744,21614,936,9863,24694,24693,10952],"class_list":{"0":"post-50077","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-convictions","9":"tag-court","10":"tag-dose","11":"tag-elijah","12":"tag-fatal","13":"tag-homicide","14":"tag-injected","15":"tag-ketamine","16":"tag-mcclain","17":"tag-paramedics","18":"tag-reverses"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/50078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}