A former Colorado police officer convicted in the 2019 killing of Elijah McClain was sentenced to 14 months in county jail on Friday.
Randy Roedema, an ex-Aurora police department (APD) officer, was found guilty of criminally negligent homicide and third-degree assault in October. He is the first official to face jail time for the killing of McClain, a 23-year-old whose death led to years of protests and calls for reforms.
The negligent homicide charge, a felony defined as killing someone by failing to recognize a substantial risk to their life, carries a punishment of up to three years in prison. The assault count is a misdemeanor punishable by up to two years in jail.
Neither conviction mandated prison time. Judge Mark Warner gave Roedema a sentence of probation and no state prison time for the homicide conviction and the 14-month jail sentence for the assault, with authorized work release.
Two other officers who faced criminal charges were acquitted last year. One of them, Nathan Woodyard, got his job back on the Aurora police force and was awarded $200,000 in back pay. In December, two paramedics were convicted of criminally negligent homicide for their roles in McClain’s death, a rare case of paramedics facing accountability for a death in police custody. The paramedics’ sentencing is scheduled for 1 March.
Sheneen McClain, Elijah’s mother, who has sat through three separate trials over several months, gave emotional testimony in court on Friday calling for the harshest punishment.
“Elijah was a young adult who had his whole life ahead of him … Elijah McClain loved music, he loved dancing, he loved singing, he loved animals and he was grateful for his life,” she said. “Elijah McClain was a healthy young man the night Randy Roedema chose to show my son the power and privileges of the boys in blue … Peace officers are not supposed to be murderers, but that is what Randy Roedema became the night he bullied my son to death.”
McClain, a massage therapist, was stopped by police on the night of 24 August 2019 on his walk home from a convenience store. He was listening to music on headphones when a passing driver called 911 to say he “looks sketchy” while acknowledging he did not appear to have weapons or pose danger.
Body-camera footage showed Woodyard first stopping McClain, quickly grabbing him and shouting: “I have a right to stop you because you’re being suspicious.” Roedema and the third officer, Jason Rosenblatt, arrived and surrounded him. The officers ended up tackling McClain to the ground, holding their bodyweight against him as he passed out. When the two paramedics arrived, they injected him with a dangerously high dose of ketamine, a sedative, and he suffered cardiac arrest.
Fueling outrage about the case were McClain’s desperate cries for help caught on camera, including, “Why are you attacking me? I don’t even kill flies. I don’t eat meat,” “I’m an introvert” and “I can’t breathe.”
At trial, Rosenblatt’s attorney had sought to cast blame on Roedema, saying Roedema had jerked McClain’s arm and held his knee on his back.
In announcing his sentencing, Warner noted that criminally negligent homicide is not considered a “violent crime” in Colorado law, but said Roedema had “used relatively significant force against Mr McClain when he was handcuffed and really wasn’t much of a threat to anybody”. He also cited Roedema’s “lack of any criminal history, a positive social history and his service to his country and community”.
Roedema was given four years of probation for the homicide offense and will also have to do community service. The judge also noted that had he given the officer a three-year prison sentence, it’s possible he would have been released on good behavior within 13 months.
In her remarks before the judge’s decision, Sheneen McClain talked about the pain of listening to defendants at trial repeatedly claim they were not responsible for her son’s death: “I only heard lies and blaming others for their trained cruelty. I heard no humanity or accountability … Elijah McClain was held down by Randy Roedema and tortured in numerous ways for no other reason except Elijah was different.”
Roedema’s lawyer had argued he was not a danger to society and would be at risk of violence in prison, citing the recent prison stabbing of Derek Chauvin, convicted of murdering George Floyd.
Joanna Schwartz, a UCLA law professor and expert on police accountability, noted that only about 2% of killings by police lead to charges and even fewer cases result in convictions. The acquittals were a reminder of how challenging it is to secure consequences for officers in criminal court: “This is an extremely rare occurrence. And even under circumstances as high-profile as this, it was a mixed judgment against the officers.”
• This article was amended on 6 January 2024. The two convicted health workers were paramedics, not EMTs.
