No prison for paramedic who injected man with ketamine before his death
A former paramedic who injected Elijah McClain with a powerful sedative avoided prison and was sentenced to probation Friday in the Black man's killing that helped fuel the 2020 racial injustice protests.
Jeremy Cooper had faced up to three years in prison after being found guilty in a jury trial last year of criminally negligent homicide. He administered a dose of ketamine to McClain, 23, who had been forcibly restrained after police stopped him as the massage therapist was walking home in a Denver suburb in 2019.
The sentencing caps a series of trials that stretched over seven months and resulted in the convictions of a police officer and two paramedics. Criminal charges against paramedics and emergency medical technicians involved in police custody cases are rare.
The other paramedic and the officer sentenced in McClain's death received more severe punishments than Cooper after being convicted on additional charges of assault.
Judge Mark Warner said evidence showed Cooper did not purposely give McClain a ketamine overdose, rejecting claims by prosecutors that the paramedic had acted with indifference.
Mom speaks out
McClain's mother told the judge prior to Friday's sentencing that she blamed McClain's death on everyone who was present that night, not just those who were convicted.
“Eternal shame on all of you,” Sheneen McClain said.
She said Cooper “did nothing” to help her son after he'd been restrained by police — didn't check his pulse, didn't check his breathing and didn't ask him how he was doing — before injecting him with an overdose of ketamine.
Close to tears as she spoke, McClain ended by raising her right fist in the air and saying loudly, “From my heart to my hands, long live Elijah McClain, always and forever.”
Experts say the convictions would have been unheard of before 2020, when George Floyd's murder sparked a nationwide reckoning over racist policing and deaths in police custody.
At least 94 people died after they were given sedatives and restrained by police from 2012 through 2021, according to findings by The Associated Press in collaboration with FRONTLINE (PBS) and the Howard Centers for Investigative Journalism.
Rallying cry
McClain's name became a rallying cry in protests over racial injustice in policing that swept the U.S. in 2020.
“Without the reckoning over criminal justice and how people of color suffer at much higher rates from police use of force and violence, it's very unlikely that anything would have come of this, that there would have been any charges, let alone convictions,” said David Harris, a University of Pittsburgh law professor and expert on racial profiling.
Harris added that the acquittals of the two officers
following weekslong trials were unsurprising, since juries are often reluctant to second guess the actions of police and other first responders.
“It's still very hard to convict,” he said.
Cooper said during the hearing that he was sorry he couldn't save McClain.
“I want you to know that I would give anything to have a different outcome, Elijah,” Cooper said as if he were talking to McClain. “I never, ever meant for anyone to hurt you.”
He added that he wished he knew more at the time, implying that he could have used that knowledge to help McClain.
Sheneen McClain walked out of the courtroom as Cooper was speaking but later returned.
Prosecutor Jason Slothouber had asked the judge to incarcerate Cooper and argued that the paramedic was “singularly most responsible” for McClain's death because Cooper gave him a “massive overdose” of ketamine.
Cooper's attorney and wife and fellow firefighters urged the judge to show leniency. They described him as compassionate and recalled Cooper saving people from fires, jumping into floodwaters to help an older woman and using CPR to try to save a child who died in a fire.