FORT COLLINS, COLORADO — The Colorado court reversed Two paramedics were convicted of murder Thursday in the death of Elijah McClain, a black man who was surrounded by police and injected with a lethal dose of ketamine.
The Court of Appeals ordered new trials for Aurora Fire Rescue paramedics Jeremy Cooper and Peter Cichonek. McClain, 23, was forcibly restrained by police, who arrested him in response to a suspicious person complaint as the massage therapist was returning home from a convenience store in 2019.
McClain’s last words — “I can’t breathe” — foreshadowed those of George Floyd a year later in Minneapolis.
It is rare for paramedics and emergency medical technicians involved in police custody to be criminally charged. As McLean’s death Others This prosecution fielded questions about the use of ketamine to subdue struggling suspects Shock waves Through the ranks of first responders across the United States
A jury in 2023 found Cooper and Cichonek guilty of criminally negligent homicide after a weeks-long trial in state district court. Jurors also found Cichuniec guilty of felony second-degree assault.
Cooper avoided prison and was sentenced to 14 months in prison with work release and supervision. Cichuniec received five years in prison.
The appeals court upheld Cichonek’s assault conviction, but erred in the instructions given to jurors regarding the criminally negligent homicide charges before their deliberations. Thursday’s ruling returns their cases to a lower court for a new trial on that charge.
Cichuniech was released early from prison in 2024 after a judge reduced his sentence to four years of probation. That judge, Mark Warner, cited “unusual and mitigating circumstances,” part of Colorado’s mandatory sentencing law that allows the court to modify the sentence after a defendant has served at least 119 days in jail. Warner said Cichuniec had to make a quick decision on the night of the arrest as the highest-ranking paramedic at the scene.
The Associated Press left a voicemail seeking comment with an attorney for McClain’s mother, Sheneen McClain. Other requests for comment were left to the paramedics’ lawyers and their union.
The paramedics’ defense attorneys said they continued their training to administer ketamine to McClain afterward He decided he had “Excited delirium” a Disputed case It is invoked to justify excessive force that some say is unscientific. They also said that the prosecution did not prove that the tranquilizer was what killed him.
Aurora paramedics were trained to use the medication for this condition in 2018. Since then, state officials have asked paramedics to stop using excited delirium as a basis for treatment. Ketamine administration.
An activist who befriended Sheneen McLean after they met at a protest said the appeal ruling was disappointing, and “one of the most divisive judicial decisions our state has seen in recent memory.”
“It strikes at the heart of the question Colorado continues to struggle to answer: When Black lives are taken under circumstances that shock the public conscience, what does accountability really mean,” said Midian Shoffner, CEO of Epitome of Black Excellence and Partnership.
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Grover reported from Fort Collins and Brown from Billings, Montana. Thomas Pepperet contributed reporting from Denver.