Homicide convictions reversed for Colorado paramedics who gave Elijah McClain ketamine shots
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- A Colorado appeals court reversed homicide convictions for two Aurora paramedics in the 2019 death of Elijah McClain, ordering new trials while leaving one paramedic’s felony assault conviction in place.
- The case, a rare criminal prosecution of paramedics nationwide, centers on Aurora’s now-abandoned practice of using ketamine to treat “excited delirium,” a disputed diagnosis critics say enabled dangerous force in police encounters.
- The appellate ruling, hailed by some first responders and decried by racial justice advocates, intensifies Colorado’s debate over what accountability looks like when a Black person dies after a police encounter.
FORT COLLINS, Colo. — A Colorado court reversed homicide convictions against two paramedics on Thursday in the death of Elijah McClain, a Black man who was pinned down by police and injected with a fatal dose of ketamine.
The appeals court ordered new trials for Aurora Fire Rescue paramedics Jeremy Cooper and Peter Cichuniec. McClain, 23, had been forcibly restrained by police, who stopped him in response to a suspicious person complaint as the massage therapist walked home from a convenience store in 2019.
McClain’s final words — “I can’t breathe” — foreshadowed those of George Floyd a year later in Minneapolis.
Criminal charges against paramedics and emergency medical technicians involved in police custody cases are rare. As McClain’s 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 U.S.
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.
Cooper avoided prison and was sentenced to 14 months in jail with work release and probation. Cichuniec received five years in prison.
The appeals court upheld Cichuniec’s assault conviction, but faulted the instructions given to jurors with respect to the criminally negligent homicide charges before they deliberated. Thursday’s ruling sends their cases back to a lower court for a new trial on that charge.
Cichuniec 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 extenuating circumstances,” a part of Colorado’s mandatory sentencing law that allows a court to modify a sentence after a defendant has served least 119 days in prison. Warner said that Cichuniec had to make a quick decision the night of the arrest as the highest-ranking paramedic at the scene.
The Associated Press left a voicemail seeking comment with the attorney for McClain’s mother, Sheneen McClain. Other requests for comment were left with the paramedics’ lawyers and their union.
Defense attorneys argued that the paramedics followed their training in giving ketamine to McClain after deciding he had “excited delirium,” a disputed condition invoked to justify excessive force that some say is unscientific. The attorneys also said prosecutors did not prove the sedative is what killed him.
Paramedics in Aurora had been trained to use the drug for the condition in 2018. State officials have since told paramedics to stop using excited delirium as a basis for administering ketamine.
An activist who befriended Sheneen McClain after they met at a protest said the appellate ruling was disappointing, and “one of the most divisive judicial decisions our state has experienced in recent memory.”
“It strikes at the heart of a question that Colorado continues to struggle to answer: When a Black life is taken under circumstances that shock the conscience of the public, what does accountability truly mean?” said MiDian Shofner, chief executive of the Epitome of Black Excellence and Partnership.
Gruver and Brown write for the Associated Press. Gruver reported from Fort Collins and Brown from Billings, Mont. AP writer Thomas Peipert in Denver contributed to this report.
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