(CNN) — Former Colorado police officer Randy Roedema was sentenced to 14 months in jail and 4 years of probation in the 2019 death of Elijah McClain, a Black man who was subdued by police and injected with ketamine.
Roedema was convicted last year of criminally negligent homicide and assault in the death of the 23-year-old.
Another officer, Jason Rosenblatt, was acquitted of all charges, including reckless manslaughter and assault, in the same trial.
Rosenblatt was fired by the police department in 2020 and Roedema had been suspended. He was fired after his conviction.
After the verdicts were read in October, Reid Elkus, an attorney for Roedema, comforted the former officer’s wife, saying, “He may not go to jail … It’s not mandatory.”
“This is not justice,” Sheneen McClain, Elijah McClain’s mother, said after the verdict, KUSA reported. The ex-officer was not acting alone in what led to her son’s death, she added.
The case began on August 24, 2019, when officers responded to a call about a “suspicious person” wearing a ski mask, according to an indictment. The officers confronted McClain, a massage therapist, musician and animal lover who was walking home from a convenience store carrying a plastic bag with iced tea.
In an interaction captured on body camera footage, police wrestled McClain to the ground and placed him in a carotid hold, and paramedics later injected him with the powerful sedative ketamine. He suffered a heart attack on the way to a hospital and was pronounced dead three days later.
Prosecutors initially declined to bring charges, but the case received renewed scrutiny following the nationwide Black Lives Matter protests in spring 2020. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis appointed a special prosecutor to reexamine the case, and in 2021 a grand jury indicted three officers and two paramedics in McClain’s death.
The third officer, Nathan Woodyard, was acquitted of all charges in November and is transitioning back to the police department on a probationary period.
Paramedic Jeremy Cooper was found guilty of criminally negligent homicide and acquitted of assault charges in December. Fellow paramedic Peter Cichuniec was convicted in the same trial of criminally negligent homicide, a second-degree unlawful administration of drugs assault charge and a sentence enhancement charge, which guarantees prison time and required him to be held immediately after the verdict. Both are scheduled for sentencing on March 1.
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