By Brad Brooks
LONGMONT, Colorado (Reuters) – A Colorado choose on Friday decreased to probation the jail sentence of a paramedic convicted within the 2019 demise of Elijah McClain, a younger Black man who died after police put him in a chokehold, The Denver Submit reported.
Choose Mark Warner, who oversaw three trials regarding the demise of McClain, who died after paramedics injected him with a strong sedative, decreased the sentence of emergency medical employee Peter Cichuniec throughout a listening to to 4 years probation, the Submit stated.
Warner in March had sentenced the paramedic to 5 years in jail, the longest sentence of any of the police and paramedics placed on trial for McClain’s demise. It was not instantly clear when Cichuniec could be launched.
“The court finds, really, there are unusual and extenuating circumstances and they are truly exceptional in this particular case,” Warner stated throughout a short listening to, in accordance with the Submit.
After hours requests for remark from the court docket weren’t returned, nor had been requests for remark from the Colorado lawyer normal’s workplace, which prosecuted the McClain instances, or attorneys for Cichuniec.
Jurors in December discovered Cichuniec, 51, responsible of criminally negligent murder and in addition of assault within the second diploma in a uncommon trial of paramedics in such a case.
Cichuniec’s companion, Jeremy Cooper, 49, was additionally discovered responsible of criminally negligent murder, and was sentenced to 14 months of labor launch.
Their joint trial was the final of three stemming from the demise of McClain, 23, who was not alleged to have dedicated any crime when officers stopped him.
One police officer was discovered responsible of criminally negligent murder and sentenced to 14 months in jail. Two different cops had been acquitted.
Native prosecutors initially declined to file fees within the McClain case. That modified following the Might 2020 killing of George Floyd, a Black man who died by the hands of Minneapolis police.
