On Tuesday, a jury began deliberating the fate of two Colorado police officers charged in the 2019 death of a man who was reportedly filmed being put in a chokehold and injected with ketamine during an arrest.
Aurora police officer Randy Roedema and former officer Jason Rosenblatt are facing charges of reckless manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, and assault. The defense called no witnesses, but they claimed that Roedema believed he saw Elijah McClain, 23, reach for another officer’s gun during the deadly encounter — though prosecutors disputed this claim, according to The Denver Gazette.
In August 2019, Aurora police officers responding to a suspicious person call detained McClain as he walked home from a corner store. During the 20-minute ordeal, officers allegedly put McClain in a carotid hold and violently restrained him with an armbar and their knees, a federal lawsuit alleged.
“Let go of me. I am an introvert. Please respect the boundaries that I am speaking,” McClain was heard saying in police’s bodycam footage.
While handcuffed, a paramedic allegedly injected McClain with 500mg of ketamine.
McClain, who went into cardiac arrest during the encounter, died days after being declared brain dead. McClain’s autopsy was inconclusive, but a federal lawsuit stated that “intense physical exertion and a narrow left coronary artery contributed to [his] death.”
In 2021, the city of Aurora agreed to pay McClain’s family $15 million. The multimillion-dollar settlement came months after a city’s independent report found wrongdoing in police officers’ stop and arrest of McClain.
The panel’s 157-page report stated that the paramedic failed to adequately assess McClain before administering ketamine, which is typically used before and during surgery or a medical procedure. As a result, the dosage administered to McClain was based on the “grossly inaccurate” assumption that he was 50 pounds heavier, the report detailed.
The report also concluded that responding officers had no basis to detain, frisk, or use a chokehold on McClain. In their report, the three-person panel called the stop “questionable,” and asserted that the officers never stated what crime McClain had committed or what crime they thought he was about to commit.
However, the judge presiding over Roedema and Rosenblatt’s trial instructed jurors not to consider whether officers had a legal basis for the stop.
According to The Denver Gazette, Nathan Woodyard was the lead officer who responded to the suspicious person report. Woodyard reportedly grabbed McClain within 10 seconds of encountering him, as McClain stated he was going home.
In 2020, Rosenblatt was fired for allegedly responding “haha” to a photo message that showed his colleagues reenacting a chokehold used on McClain at his memorial site.
The Denver Gazette reported that the jury could opt to convict Roedema and Rosenblatt of criminally negligent homicide, a lesser charge, if they do not believe they are guilty of manslaughter.
Woodyard’s trial is scheduled to begin on Friday. In late September, the Colorado Supreme Court denied a bid to dismiss charges against the two paramedics involved in McClain’s arrest, Jeremy Cooper and Lieutenant Peter Cichuniec. Their trial is scheduled to begin in late November.
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[Featured image: Elijah McClain/GoFundMe]
