The Elijah McClain case seems so obvious.
A 23-year-old Black man, walking home from the store with an iced tea on Aug. 24, 2019, is jumped by a gang of police officers, rendered unconscious with a carotid hold, injected with an overdose of ketamine by paramedics and delivered to a hospital in a coma from which he never emerged.
Rendered brain dead from the violence at the hands of police, he was removed from life support a few days later.
He was a musician and a massage therapist. In his last conscious moments, he apologized to officers for vomiting after they attacked him.
He was never accused of any crime.
If that doesn’t provoke outrage, what happened next surely should.
The coroner ruled his cause of death was “undetermined.” The district attorney in Adams County said, given the coroner’s report, there was insufficient evidence to pursue criminal charges against the officers involved. Case closed.
At least that’s what the goons in Aurora obviously hoped.
Meanwhile, some Aurora police officers distributed a photo of themselves smiling as they mocked the violent arrest of McClain at the site of a spontaneous memorial established for the young victim of police violence. They sent the photo to some of the officers involved in the attack on McClain.
One of them, Jason Rosenblatt, replied “haha.”
Like it was funny.
And even then, the whole horrific incident likely would have been withheld from public scrutiny forever if not for the international reckoning over the murder of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020.
Suddenly, the persistent efforts of Elijah’s mother, Sheneen McClain, to seek justice began to break through. Black Lives Matter protesters chanted “Say his name, Elijah McClain!” and performed violin vigils in his honor across Colorado and in cities around the country.
Nearly a year after his death, the City of Aurora ordered an independent review of the case, which raised numerous questions and resulted in Gov. Jared Polis issuing an executive order, calling for Attorney General Phil Weiser to conduct an investigation.
The evidence against the police and emergency responders unearthed by the grand jury investigation was shocking and, maybe, criminal.
Fast forward to December 2023.
The assault on Elijah McClain has been recounted vividly and repeatedly in courtrooms in the trials of Aurora police officers and paramedics this fall, retraumatizing his family, friends and the legions of supporters across the country, who contributed more than $2.5 million in a GoFundMe campaign for attorneys’ fees in the quest for justice.
This was to be another long-delayed reckoning.
But justice remains elusive.
One officer, Randy Roedema, was convicted of criminally negligent homicide in a trial in October. The other two police officers involved in McClain’s death, Rosenblatt and Nathan Woodyard, were acquitted of all charges.
The Aurora PD has announced that Woodyard will be returning to the force and will receive more than $200,000 in back pay accrued during his unpaid suspension pending trial. Rosenblatt will not be returning to the force since he got fired in 2020 after the reprehensible mocking photo incident.
And the trial of Aurora paramedics Jeremy Cooper and Peter Cichuniec, who are charged with manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide and second-degree assault, began last week.
The indictment states that the EMTs didn’t assess McClain’s condition properly and erroneously diagnosed him with “excited delirium,” a condition that the American Medical Association has dismissed as little more than a convenient excuse for cops to beat the crap out of people during arrests.
It says they failed to assess his body weight before pumping him full of ketamine and then they didn’t monitor his conditions after administering the powerful sedative.
Prosecutors say the EMTs never spoke to McClain, never checked his vital signs or even touched him. They just hit him with ketamine and then stood around waiting for him to lose consciousness.
Still, chances are good they’ll walk.
Defense attorneys have been masterful at splintering this case into little pieces and saying if not for the other guy’s action in the whole shameful spectacle, McClain wouldn’t have died.
The tactic is working and when all the trials are over and the appeals have been litigated, odds are no one will go to prison for the murder of Elijah McClain, no one will be held to account.
Still, we don’t need a jury trial to know they all are responsible for the death of Elijah McClain. In this, the evidence is indisputable.
Any one of them could have stopped the attack.
Any one of them could have simply asked McClain what he was doing and listened to the answer.
Any one of them could have shown the slightest bit of common sense or even a hint of compassion and rescued the 140-pound man who was vomiting under the weight of a burly police officer kneeling on his back.
Any one of them could have asked why they needed to sedate the young man who was clearly unarmed, accused of absolutely no crime, catatonic and in handcuffs.
Any one of them could have done the right thing.
No one did.
They are all guilty of so very much. It’s all so obvious.
Diane Carman is a Denver communications consultant.
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