{"id":26287,"date":"2023-10-13T05:04:24","date_gmt":"2023-10-13T09:04:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=26287"},"modified":"2023-10-13T05:04:24","modified_gmt":"2023-10-13T09:04:24","slug":"colorado-officer-found-guilty-in-elijah-mcclain-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2023\/10\/13\/colorado-officer-found-guilty-in-elijah-mcclain-death\/","title":{"rendered":"Colorado officer found guilty in Elijah McClain death"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A Colorado officer has been found guilty in the death of Elijah McClain, who was pinned down before a medic injected him with ketamine and he died.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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A jury unanimously convicted officer Randy Roedema of criminally negligent homicide and third-degree assault.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Another officer, Jason Rosenblatt, facing the same charges was acquitted.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Both men were accused of using excessive force and ignoring the unarmed black man’s repeated cries of “I can’t breathe”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Under Colorado law, Roedema now faces possible prison time and a fine.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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He was suspended without pay from the Aurora Police Department, while Mr Rosenblatt was fired in 2020.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The 12-person jury reached a verdict on Thursday after deliberating for 16 hours in over two days. The trial is the first of three in relation to Mr McClain’s death.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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On 24 August 2019, Mr McClain, a 23-year-old autistic massage therapist, was walking home from a corner shop when three white police officers confronted him after an emergency caller reported a “sketchy” person in the Denver suburb of Aurora.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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He was wearing a balaclava, which his family has said protected him from chronic chills due to his anaemia.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Listening to music on his headphones, he had initially ignored officers’ calls for him to stop walking.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Body camera footage of the incident showed him pleading with officers that he did nothing wrong, before they wrestled him to the ground and placed him in a chokehold.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Seven times, Mr McClain was heard telling the officers: “I can’t breathe” – the same refrain uttered by George Floyd as he was murdered by a police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 2020.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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After officers called for assistance, a medic injected Mr McClain with ketamine to sedate him.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Mr McClain went limp, stopped breathing and never regained consciousness. He was declared brain-dead three days later.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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A key focus of the two officers’ trial was how Mr McClain died.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In their closing arguments, prosecutors said Roedema and Mr Rosenblatt “chose force at every opportunity” instead of de-escalating the situation, counter to their training.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Meanwhile, lawyers for the officers argued they had no choice but to forcefully subdue him after he resisted them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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They also argued that it was the ketamine that killed Mr McClain, and that the paramedics were responsible for his death.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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An autopsy report in September 2022 concluded that he had died from “complications of ketamine administration following forcible restraint”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In a statement on social media after Thursday’s verdict, Aurora Police Department Chief Art Acevedo said: “We respect the verdict handed by the jury.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Mr McClain was declared dead on 27 August 2019, but his death faced renewed scrutiny after Mr Floyd’s murder.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Several others have also been charged with his death, including a third officer, Nathan Woodyard, and medics Jeremy Cooper and Peter Cichuniec.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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All three have pleaded not guilty. They will be tried in two separate cases later this year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Roedema is scheduled to be sentenced in January.<\/p>\n

Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Colorado officer has been found guilty in the death of Elijah McClain, who was pinned down before a medic injected him with ketamine and he died. A jury unanimously convicted officer Randy Roedema of […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26288,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[109,2,3],"tags":[9801,9800,539,4015,9798,9802,9799,7221],"class_list":{"0":"post-26287","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headline","8":"category-news","9":"category-usa","10":"tag-aurora","11":"tag-aurora-police-department","12":"tag-colorado","13":"tag-denver","14":"tag-elijah-mcclain","15":"tag-ketamine","16":"tag-randy-roedema","17":"tag-us-police-killings","18":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26287"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26290,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26287\/revisions\/26290"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}