One Colorado officer convicted and another acquitted in death of Elijah McClain
Jurors convicted a Denver-area police officer Thursday and acquitted another in the 2019 death of Elijah McClain, a Black man whose name became a rallying cry in protests over racial injustice in policing.
Aurora Police Officer Randy Roedema was found guilty of criminally negligent homicide and third-degree assault. The 12-person jury found Officer Jason Rosenblatt not guilty on all charges.
McClain’s mother, Sheneen, listened to the verdict from the courtroom’s front row, where Colorado Atty. Gen. Phil Weiser had his hand on her shoulder. She held her right hand high in a raised fist as she left the courtroom.
McClain died after being put in a neck hold by a third officer and pinned to the ground, then injected by paramedics with an overdose of ketamine. The third officer and two paramedics are awaiting trial.
Grand jury indicts three police officers and two paramedics on charges including manslaughter and negligent homicide in the death of Elijah McClain.
The case initially did not receive widespread attention, but protests over the killing of George Floyd the following year sparked outrage over McClain’s death. His pleading words captured on body camera video, “I’m an introvert and I’m different,” struck a chord.
A prosecutor in 2019 decided against criminal charges because the coroner’s office could not determine exactly how the 23-year-old massage therapist died. But Colorado Gov. Jared Polis ordered Weiser’s office to take another look at the case in 2020, and the officers and paramedics were indicted in 2021 by a grand jury.
The killings of McClain, Floyd and others triggered a wave of legislation that put limits on the use of neck holds in more than two dozen states. Colorado now tells paramedics not to give ketamine to people suspected of having a controversial condition known as excited delirium, which has symptoms including increased strength that has been associated with racial bias against Black men.
Four years after McClain died after being stopped by police in Colorado, two of the police officers charged in his death are set to go on trial.
Roedema and Rosenblatt did not testify in their defense at trial. Their attorneys blamed McClain’s death on the paramedics for injecting him with ketamine, which doctors said is what ultimately killed him.
However, prosecutors argued that the officers’ restraint of McClain contributed to the death. Senior Assistant Atty. Gen. Jason Slothouber told jurors that Roedema and Rosenblatt also encouraged the paramedics to give McClain ketamine by describing him as having symptoms of excited delirium that they had learned about in training. But he said the officers did not tell them anything about McClain’s complaints that he could not breathe, something prosecutors said happened six times.
Sheneen McClain sat with attorneys for the state in the front row during the trial, part of her quest to remind the mostly white jury that her son was a real person. She watched the encounter played over and over again along with graphic photos from his autopsy.
During testimony that stretched over three weeks, witnesses were limited to offering what they “perceived” someone to be doing or saying in the video. The video clips did not always provide a complete picture of what was happening, but Judge Mark Warner said the jurors were the only ones who could decide what they meant, just like any other piece of evidence.
Police in Aurora, Colo., have released photos that show officers smiling as they reenacted the chokehold used on Elijah McClain, a Black man who died.
Despite the emotional weight of McClain’s last words captured on body camera and a story about him playing the violin in an animal shelter, the trial did not include much testimony about him or his life.
A co-worker at a massage studio testified about how he used to bike or run miles to work in an affluent suburb and then also run on lunch breaks. A photograph of a smiling McClain she took shortly before his death was shown to jurors during closing arguments.
McClain was stopped Aug. 24, 2019, while walking home from a convenience store on a summer night, listening to music and wearing a mask that covered most of his face. A 911 caller reported him as suspicious, and the police stop quickly became physical after McClain, seemingly caught off guard, asked to be left alone. He had not been accused of committing any crime.
The encounter quickly escalated, with Officers Nathan Woodyard, Roedema and Rosenblatt taking McClain to the ground, and Woodyard putting him in a neck hold and pressing against his carotid artery, temporarily rendering him unconscious. The officers told investigators they took McClain down after hearing Roedema say, “He grabbed your gun, dude.” He later said Rosenblatt’s gun was the target.
The results of an investigation into the fatal arrest of Elijah McClain in suburban Denver criticizes how police handled the entire incident.
The initial statement was heard on the body camera video, but exactly what happened is difficult to see. The prosecution urged jurors to be skeptical, saying Rosenblatt said he could not feel anyone reaching for his gun.
But one of Roedema’s defense lawyers, Don Sisson, pointed out that McClain said “I intend to take my power back,” which he argued showed intent. The officers had to act in the moment to protect themselves, Sisson said.
“They didn’t get to watch the video over and over and over for three weeks before they get to act,” he said.
Paramedics injected McClain with ketamine as Roedema and another officer who was not charged held him on the ground. He went into cardiac arrest en route to a hospital and died three days later.
Rosenblatt’s lawyer, Harvey Steinberg, said his client, the most junior officer on scene, was a scapegoat in a prosecution driven by politics. He pointed out that Rosenblatt was not restraining McClain when the ketamine was given.
Elijah McClain died after a police encounter in a Denver suburb in 2019 because he was injected with a powerful sedative after being forcibly restrained, an autopsy has concluded.
After the grand jury was convened to reinvestigate the case, the doctor who performed McClain’s autopsy, Stephen Cina, revised his opinion and concluded that he died of complications from the ketamine while also noting that that occurred after the forcible restraint. However, Cina still was not able to say whether the death was a homicide or an accident or whether the officers’ actions contributed to McClain’s death.
Dr. Roger Mitchell, another forensic pathologist who reviewed the autopsy and searched for clues about what happened in the body camera video, found their actions did play a role. He labeled the death a homicide.
The neck hold lowered the oxygen level in McClain’s brain while his exertions during the altercation increased the amount of acid in his body, Mitchell, a Howard University medical school professor and former chief medical officer for Washington, D.C., said during testimony.
The lack of oxygen and increased acid created a “vicious cycle,” he added, causing McClain to vomit and then inhale the vomit into his lungs so it became hard for him to breathe.
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