LOS ANGELES – A Colorado appeals court ordered a new trial on June 4 for two former paramedics convicted in the death of Elijah McClain, a young Black man who was pinned to the ground and injected with a lethal dose of ketamine.
His death did not immediately attract attention but became a clarion call of the Black Lives Matter movement, which surged following the 2020 murder by a police officer of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
McClain, 23, suffered a heart attack in an ambulance moments after his forceful arrest in the city of Aurora, Colorado, in 2019, and died days later.
The police had been called by a person reporting a “suspicious” Black man wearing a ski mask and “acting strangely” on a street in Aurora.
The two paramedics who oversaw the injection, Jeremy Cooper and Peter Cichuniec, were convicted in 2023 of criminally negligent homicide.
Cooper received 14 months in jail with work release, and four years’ probation, while Cichuniec was sentenced to five years in prison.
On June 4, an appeals court ruled that the court had given flawed instructions to jurors about how to assess the paramedics’ negligence.
Jurors were told to consider the standard of care a “reasonable person” should apply in the situation, as opposed to that of a trained paramedic. The date of a new trial has yet to be determined. AFP
