Even though Roedema and Rosenblatt are co-defendants, the jurors can determine their guilt or innocence separately of both of their charges, manslaughter and second-degree assault. This means, even though they are all sitting at the same table in this trial, lawyers have pointed fingers at the other one at times during the trial, including during closing arguments.
“Rosenblatt didn’t jerk his arm. It was Roedema. Rosenblatt didn’t have his knee in his back. It was Roedema,” Steinberg said, Rosenblatt’s attorney.
Roedema’s defense attorneys said there were, at one point, 10 officers on the scene, two sergeants, two EMTs and two medics and “not a single person had a single concern about what Randy Roedema did.”
In the prosecutor’s rebuttal, Slothouber said that shouldn’t have anything to do with the behavior of the officers that night. He, again, pointed out that the officers didn’t follow their own policies and procedures.
“Just because there is a sergeant on the scene doesn’t mean that you stopped following your training,” he said.
Both defense teams pointed to the autopsy findings — which laid the blame on everyone with hands on McClain that night — as reason to blame the paramedics for McClain’s death, not the officers.
Dr. Stephen Cina, the forensic pathologist who performed McClain’s original autopsy, said he couldn’t be medically certain what killed McClain, so he said he died of complications of ketamine after forcible restraint.
“Elijah McClain would not have died but for the ketamine,” Cisson, Roedema’s attorney, said.
Slothouber countered that the officers’ negligence — specifically ignoring McClain’s increasingly labored breathing as he aspirated his own vomit after a carotid hold — contributed to his death.
“Even if they don't push that needle in themselves … they're leading the paramedics to this idea,” he told the jury, referencing the ketamine injection. Officers talked about giving McClain ketamine before paramedics arrived on scene with the drug. “They're encouraging it and saying, yeah, perfect, and then they're holding him in this dangerous position … That is guilt just as much as that they've done it themselves.”
The jury deliberated Tuesday only for about 15 minutes before being dismissed at 5 p.m. They will return to deliberate Wednesday at 8:30 a.m.
