Only police officer convicted in death of Elijah McClain appeals verdict, alleging errors

FILE PHOTO: Former Aurora Officer Randy Roedema gets in his truck after leaving the courthouse following being sentenced in his role in the 2019 death of Elijah McClain on Friday, Jan. 5, 2024, at the Adams County Court in in Brighton, Colo. Roedema has appealed the 14-month jail sentence.
Timothy Hurst/Denver Gazette
AURORA, Colo. — The only Aurora police officer found guilty of wrongdoing in the death of Elijah McClain has appealed his conviction.
Randy Roedema, 41, faces 14 months in jail and four years of probation after being convicted of criminally negligent homicide and third-degree assault for his actions in McClain’s death.
He is expected to start serving the jail term March 22.
Roedema was among five first responders indicted by a statewide grand jury and accused of wrongdoing in the Aug. 24, 2019, death of McClain, 23.
McClain was walking home after buying three cans of tea at a convenience store when a 911 caller reported that he was wearing a mask and seemed “sketchy.”
Aurora officers Nathan Woodyard, Jason Rosenblatt, and Roedema stopped and subdued McClain. After Roedema said that McClain had tried to grab Rosenblatt’s gun, the officers twice put him in a neck hold that briefly rendered him unconscious. He vomited and inhaled some of it, and his medical condition deteriorated before paramedics Jeremy Cooper and Peter Cichuniec injected him with the sedative ketamine.
Prosecutors said repeatedly during the trials no evidence supported the theory that McClain went for an officer’s gun.
McClain’s heart stopped. Although paramedics revived him, he died three days later without ever regaining consciousness.
In the filing, Roedema’s attorneys asked the Colorado Court of Appeals to consider a number of questions, including:
Whether Adams County District Judge Mark Warner erred in trying Roedema and Rosenblatt together, in allowing amendments to the indictment, and in overruling Roedema’s challenges to the dismissal of several jurors by prosecutors.
Whether the indictment should have been dismissed before trial for “defects and deficiencies” and for “errors in the instructions given to the grand jury?”
Whether sufficient evidence existed to convict Roedema of criminally negligent homicide?
The filing also suggested that the attorneys could raise other issues.
The same jury that found Roedema guilty acquitted Rosenblatt of all charges. A jury in a separate trial acquitted Woodyard of all charges. He later resigned from Aurora Police after being reinstated and receiving back pay.
In another trial, a jury convicted both paramedics of criminally negligent homicide and also found Cichuniec, the supervisor on the scene, guilty of second-degree assault.
Cichuniec is scheduled to be sentenced March 1. Cooper’s sentencing is set for April 26.
For more on this story, and others, visit The Denver Gazette’s news partners 9NEWS.com.