An Aurora police officer was convicted Thursday by an Adams County jury of criminally negligent homicide in the 2019 death of 23-year-old Elijah McClain, while a second officer who was also on trial in the case was acquitted.
A 12-person jury also convicted Officer Randy Roedema of assault in the trial that began last month.
Former Officer Jason Rosenblatt was acquitted of manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide and assault. He was fired by the Aurora Police Department in 2020.
The jury deliberated for about two days before reaching their verdict on Thursday afternoon. Adams County District Court Judge Mark Warner read the verdict in an open court hearing that lasted about 10 minutes.
“The court understands that this is an important case for a lot of people,” Warner said before reading the verdict.
Officers stopped McClain on Aug. 24, 2019, after receiving a report from a 17-year-old in the area that McClain looked suspicious. Though McClain had committed no crime, officers put him in a neck hold and then paramedics injected him with ketamine, a powerful sedative. McClain suffered cardiac arrest and died in the hospital a few days later.
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The case initially didn’t receive widespread attention, but protests over the killing of George Floyd the following year sparked outrage in Colorado and across the world over McClain’s death. His pleading words captured on body camera footage, “I’m an introvert and I’m different,” struck a chord.
The Adams County district attorney in 2019 decided against criminal charges against the officers and paramedics who stopped McClain because the county coroner’s office could not determine exactly how McClain, a massage therapist, died. But Colorado Gov. Jared Polis ordered state Attorney General Phil 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.
Roedema’s sentencing was scheduled for January.
Trials for a third officer and two paramedics charged in McClain’s death —Nathan Woodyard and Jeremy Cooper and Peter Cichuniec — are set to begin later this year.
Woodyard was the officer who put McClain in the neck hold.
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.
The dose of ketamine given to McClain was much larger than what was recommended for a person of his size. EMS staff estimated McClain weighed as much as 80 pounds more than he did, according to the report, which influenced the quantity of ketamine he was given.
However, prosecutors argued that the officers’ restraint of McClain contributed to making the encounter deadly.
Senior Assistant Attorney General 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.
McClain’s mother, Sheneen McClain, sat with attorneys for the state in the front row of the courtroom during the trial, part of her quest to remind the mostly white jury that her son was a real person. She watched the encounter being played over and over again along with graphic photos from his autopsy.
“This is the divided states of America, and that’s what happens,” she said as she walked away from the court house.
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 briefly 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 while walking home from a convenience store on a summer night, listening to music and wearing a mask that covered most of his face. The encounter quickly became physical after McClain, seemingly caught off guard, asked to be left alone.
The encounter quickly escalated, with 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 initial statement was heard on the body camera footage 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, according to Sisson.
“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 the 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.
After the grand jury was convened to re-investigate 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 if the death was a homicide or an accident or if 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.
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.
The city of Aurora placed a moratorium on EMS using ketamine shortly after McClain’s death.
Rosenblatt was fired by the Aurora Police Department in 2020 after receiving a text message that included a photo of fellow officers smiling and reenacting a carotid hold, similar to the one performed on McClain. Rosenblatt responded “haha.”
Sheneen McClain and Elijah’s father, LaWayne Mosely, sued Aurora over their son’s death and settled the case for $15 million.
McClain’s mother, Sheneen McClain, listened to the verdict Thursday from the front row, where Weiser, Colorado’s attorney general, had his hand on her shoulder. She held her right hand high in a raised fist as she left the courtroom.
“Today’s verdict is about accountability; everyone is accountable and equal under the law,” Weiser said in a written statement. “And hopefully today’s verdict is another step in the healing process for the Aurora community and the state. I recognize that some people may not agree with the verdict, but we all must respect the jury system, which is a pillar of our democratic republic.”
Weiser added: “We must do all we can to prevent these tragedies. We must work to make policing safer, more effective, and more worthy of the public’s trust. Only then will we truly have justice and public safety.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.