Colorado court orders new trial for McClain paramedics

A Colorado appeals court has overturned the homicide convictions of two paramedics involved in the 2019 death of Elijah McClain, a 23-year-old Black man who died after being forcibly restrained by police and injected with a powerful sedative. The Colorado Court of Appeals ordered new trials for former Aurora Fire Rescue paramedics Jeremy Cooper and Peter Cichuniec on Thursday, citing errors in the jury instructions for the criminally negligent homicide charges.

McClain, a massage therapist, was walking home from a convenience store in Aurora, a Denver suburb, in August 2019 when police officers stopped him in response to a report of a suspicious person. Officers placed him in a neck hold and forcibly restrained him. Paramedics Cooper and Cichuniec arrived on the scene and injected McClain with a dose of ketamine. He suffered cardiac arrest in an ambulance shortly afterward and died three days later.

A state jury convicted both paramedics of criminally negligent homicide in December 2023. The appeals court ruled that the trial court failed to properly instruct the jury on the legal standard for that charge and did not provide adequate guidance when jurors expressed confusion. The...