The former Aurora paramedic convicted of criminally negligent homicide for forcibly giving a 23-year-old Black massage therapist a lethal dose of ketamine has not yet served a day in jail because of multiple appeals in his case.
In April, Jeremy Cooper was sentenced to 14 months of work release and four years of probation for giving an overdose of ketamine to Elijah McClain and failing to assess his well-being both before giving him the drug and afterward.
Work release usually allows convicted people to spend weekends and nights in jail but go out and work during the day.
At the sentencing, Cooper’s family expressed concern that they would be financially harmed if he was serving time in prison and not making money for the family.
But Cooper’s attorneys filed an appeal and his work release sentence was stayed — or delayed — at the time. A judge should rule eventually on the appeal and the fate of his sentence.
“I’m not surprised that Cooper hasn’t spent any time in jail because that’s just how the corrupt law works,” said McClain’s mother, Sheneen, on Friday. “The fact that the lawyers were able to make that happen to him proves there are more loopholes.”
Meanwhile, Cooper’s then-supervisor at Aurora Fire Rescue, former paramedic Peter Cichuniec, has been incarcerated since his December 2023 conviction for criminally negligent homicide and second-degree assault for McClain’s death.
The assault charge was what prosecutors call a sentence enhancer, which means he was immediately handcuffed and incarcerated when the jury found him guilty.
Cichuniec authorized Cooper’s forcible administration of 500 milligrams of ketamine on McClain, which was too much for his body weight and size. The man almost immediately became catatonic after receiving the drug and suffered cardiac arrest in the ambulance on the scene. He died in the hospital a few days later.
Cichuniec was sentenced to five years in state prison but is expected to appear in Adams County court Friday afternoon to try to appeal to a judge that he be released with roughly 10 months of time served.
McClain was walking home from a convenience store with a bag of iced teas when Aurora police officers forcibly stopped him because of a suspicious person call on the night of Aug. 19, 2019.
McClain was not suspected of committing any crime when officers violently took him to the ground and gave him two carotid holds, which cut blood flow off to his brain. He repeatedly told officers he couldn’t breathe. When paramedics arrived, they forcibly gave him a dose of ketamine without properly checking McClain’s deteriorating medical condition.
On Friday, Sheneen McClain said she never thought it made sense that Cichuniec received a more severe sentence than Cooper or former APD officer Randy Roedema, who was convicted of criminally negligent homicide and third-degree assault for McClain’s death.
“I never thought it was OK that he got more time than those who brutalized my son,” McClain said, referring to Cichuniec. “They all should have gotten the same amount of time.”
On Cichuniec’s request for a sentence reduction, McClain said she felt mixed.
“For me, it doesn't change anything,” she said. “If he gets the same sentence as Cooper and Roedema, it doesn’t change anything for me. It just means he gets to spend more time with his family.”
