The arraignments for the three police officers and two paramedics charged in Elijah Mcclain’s 2019 death have been rescheduled for Nov. 4.

None of the five entered pleas in a hearing Friday.

Mcclain, a 23-year-old Black man, died in the hospital on Aug. 30, 2019, days after police officers forcibly restrained him, put him in a neck hold and paramedics injected him with 500 milligrams of the sedative ketamine. Mcclain was not suspected of any crime at the time of his police encounter.

Judge Priscilla Loew decided in late July a grand jury had found probable cause to indict the five officers and paramedics: Jason Rosenblatt, Nathan Woodyard, Randy Roedema, Jeremy Cooper and Peter Cichuniec. The grand jury returned 32 counts last year, including a charge each of criminally negligent homicide and manslaughter, as well as assault counts.

The defendants had requested a probable cause review of the indictments. Woodyard’s attorneys asked Loew to dismiss his charges on the basis of testimony to the grand jury by several medical experts that the ketamine injection caused Mcclain’s death, and not the effects of the neck hold. His attorneys argued Woodyard had no authority over the decision to inject ketamine.

The 17th Judicial District

Attorney’s Office declined to bring charges against the five, but Attorney General Phil Weiser convened a grand jury last year.

The Legislature passed sweeping law enforcement reform legislation in June 2020, nearly a year after Mcclain’s death and in the wake of international racial justice protests following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody. Weiser’s office also made a report about patterns of racially biased policing and excessive force last September based on a civil investigation into the practices of Aurora’s police and fire departments, enabled by the new policing reform law. The agencies are now under a consent decree with the state.