By admin 
The Colorado Court of Appeals on Thursday reversed the homicide convictions of two former Aurora paramedics charged in the 2019 death of Elijah McClain and ordered new trials.
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Paramedic Peter Cichuniec, the senior medical responder on the scene, and Jeremy Cooper, who injected McClain with ketamine, were both convicted of criminally negligent homicide in December 2023.
McClain, a 23-year-old Black massage therapist, died after he was forcibly detained by Aurora police while walking home from a convenience store. After officers claimed McClain was resisting, the paramedics injected him with an overdose of the sedative ketamine.
He went into cardiac arrest while en route to the hospital and died three days later.
On Thursday, the Colorado Court of Appeals ruled that the trial judge gave jurors incorrect instructions about the legal standard they should use when considering the criminally negligent homicide charge, according to the court’s published opinion. The appeals court also said the judge should have provided additional guidance after jurors told the court they were unsure how to apply that standard.
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Cooper, who had faced up to three years in prison, was sentenced to probation. A judge originally sentenced Cichuniec to five years in prison, but later vacated that sentence after he served 10 months. He was resentenced to four years of probation.
Their convictions sent shockwaves through the ranks of paramedics and medical professionals across the U.S. It thrust their profession into the acrimonious fight over social justice sparked by the 2020 murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis.
The jury also found Cichuniec guilty of second-degree assault. The Court of Appeals upheld that conviction.
This is a developing story that will be updated.