Second police officer acquitted in death of Elijah McClain
A second Colorado police officer has been acquitted in the 2019 death of Elijah McClain, a young, unarmed Black man whose case drew national attention and became central to debates over police brutality and race.
A jury found Monday that Nathan Woodyard, the first officer who stopped Mr. McClain as he walked home from a grocery store in an Aurora, Colorado, neighborhood, was not guilty of manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide.
Mr. McClain, a 23-year-old massage therapist, was approached by Mr. Woodyard after a 911 caller described him as “sketchy.” According to prosecutors, Mr. Woodyard quickly laid hands on Mr. McClain without explaining the reason for the stop. Within minutes he placed Mr McClain in a neck restraint, known as a carotid restraint, which briefly knocked him unconscious. Paramedics then injected Mr McClain with ketamine, a powerful sedative. He died a few days later in hospital.
The verdict follows a recent split decision by another Colorado jury in an earlier trial involving officers in the same encounter. Last month, a jury convicted one officer but acquitted another in the case.
Two years after Mr McClain’s death in 2019, a total of five police officers and paramedics were charged. Their lawsuits are among the most consequential police liability cases since the death of George Floyd. A predominantly white and female jury accepted Mr. Woodyard’s arguments that he was justified in using the now-banned neck brace because, he believed, Mr. McClain had reached for another police officer’s gun during the struggle, and that it was largely not a factor in his death.
The acquittal was the second verdict in a case that was divided over three trials.
Mr. McClain’s mother, who was in the courtroom for this trial and the previous one, began to cry as she heard the verdict read.
Andrew Ho, the lawyer representing Mr Woodyard, said: “We are so grateful that the jury listened to all the evidence.”
Mr Woodyard, 34, was the third and final police officer to stand trial. Randy Roedema was convicted of murder and Jason Rosenblatt was acquitted on all counts last month. The joint trial of two paramedics is expected to begin on November 27.
During Mr. Woodyard’s three-week trial, jurors were presented with two ways to think about his actions: Prosecutors argued that Mr. Woodyard chose confrontation over conversation. Defense lawyers argued that he made quick decisions in a chaotic situation and was not responsible for Mr. McClain’s death.
The centerpiece of Mr. Woodyard’s defense was his own emotional memory of meeting Mr. McClain, so far the only personal account of their interaction.
Mr Woodyard was working a late night shift on August 24, 2019, when he confronted Mr McClain around 10:45 p.m. At the time, Mr. McClain was listening to music, waving his arms and wearing a mask, which his mother said he used because he was anemic.
Mr Woodyard tearfully described a turbulent scene in which the three officers struggled to control Mr McClain. Mr. Woodyard said he placed him in the hold after Mr. Roedema said Mr. McClain reached for Mr. Rosenblatt’s gun, a claim disputed by prosecutors.
“I expected to be shot, and I thought I would never see my wife again,” Mr. Woodyard testified.
Jason Slothouber, a prosecutor, told jurors that the “regretful, remorseful, empathetic version of Mr. Woodyard on the stand” was not the person McClain was confronted the night he was arrested.
The core of the state’s argument against Mr. Woodyard was that the carotid artery, which puts pressure on the neck and makes it difficult to breathe, was the event that led to a cascade of health complications that made Mr. McClain more vulnerable to the ketamine . , which eventually caused his heart to stop.
Roger Mitchell, a forensic pathologist who specializes in in-custody deaths, testified on behalf of the state that there was a direct link between the officer’s actions and Mr. McClain’s death, and he classified it as a homicide.
“Both the compulsion and the ketamine killed Elijah McClain,” Mr. Mitchell said.
The defense said the threat of a weapon and the officers’ struggle to control Mr. McClain prompted Mr. Woodyard’s decision to use the carotid artery. He said he feared one of the officers would shoot Mr. McClain.
“This has to end immediately,” Mr. Woodyard testified that he remembered thinking at the time. “I expected to possibly be shot and die and I had to use force.”
Throughout the trial, the defense placed blame on the paramedics who administered the ketamine. Mr. Woodyard said that in retrospect he realized his mistakes and would do things differently based on “what I know now.”
During the State’s cross-examination of Mr. Woodyard, he acknowledged that he violated police department policy by, among other things, failing to de-escalate the situation and alert paramedics to McClain’s breathing problems. These failures, the state argued, directly caused Mr. McClain’s death.
The deaths of Mr. McClain and Mr. Floyd helped usher in sweeping changes in police services in Aurora and in Colorado state law. The trials, among the most high-profile since summer 2020, are being closely watched by social justice activists and court observers as a barometer of the progress of police accountability.
“The responsibility of the police is still under discussion, even when it concerns factual information evidence, even with bodycam footage,” said Charles Coleman Jr., a civil rights attorney, former Brooklyn prosecutor and MSNBC legal analyst. “We are still at a point where we cannot be confident that an officer’s conviction for misconduct will proceed through our justice system.”
But he added that prosecutors showed more willingness to file charges in cases involving police brutality.