Paramedic who injected Elijah Mcclain with ketamine avoids prison

BRIGHTON, Colo. – A former paramedic who injected Elijah Mcclain with a powerful sedative avoided prison Friday and was sentenced to 14 months in jail with work release and probation in the killing of the Black man 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 cap s 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.

Cooper, who was fired after his conviction, was sentenced to four years of probation including 14 months in jail under a program that will allow him to leave for work and return to jail at night and on weekends, said Lawrence Pacheco with the Colorado Attorney General’s Office.

The other paramedic involved in Mcclain’s death received a more severe punishment after being convicted on an additional charge of felony 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.

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, 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.”

She later told reporters that she wasn’t expecting much from the trials and wasn’t surprised Cooper avoided prison time. “We won, Elijah won,” she said.

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.

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 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.”