BRIGHTON, Colo– A former paramedic who injected Elijah McClain with ketamine avoided prison and was sentenced to probation Friday after his homicide conviction in the Black man’s death, which helped fuel the 2020 racial injustice protests.

Jeremy Cooper faced up to three years in prison. He administered a dose of the sedative ketamine to McClain, 23, who had been forcibly restrained after police stopped him as he was walking home in a Denver suburb in 2019.

The sentencing caps a series of trials that stretched over seven months and resulted in the convictions of a police officer and two paramedics. Criminal charges against paramedics and emergency medical technicians involved in police custody cases are rare.

Experts say the convictions would have been unheard of before 2020, when George Floyd’s murder sparked a nationwide reckoning over racist policing and deaths in police custody.

McClain’s mother, Sheneen McClain, said justice has not yet been served. She said the two acquitted Aurora police officers, as well as other firefighters and police on the scene, were complicit in her son’s killing and that they escaped justice.

“I’m waiting on heaven to hand down everybody’s judgment. Because I know heaven ain’t gonna miss the mark,” she told The Associated Press.

At least 94 people died after they were given sedatives and restrained by police from 2012 through 2021, according to findings by the AP in collaboration with FRONTLINE (PBS) and the Howard Centers for Investigative Journalism.

McClain’s name became a rallying cry in protests over racial injustice in policing that swept the U.S. in 2020.

“Without the reckoning over criminal justice and how people of color suffer at much higher rates from police use of force and violence, it’s very unlikely that anything would have come of this, that there would have been any charges, let alone convictions,” said David Harris, a University of Pittsburgh law professor and expert on racial profiling.

Harris added that the two officers’ acquittals of the two officers following weekslong trials were unsurprising, since juries are often reluctant to second guess the actions of police and other first responders.

“It’s still very hard to convict,” he said.

The judge who presided over the hearing Friday sentenced ex-paramedic Peter Cichuniec in March to five years in prison for criminally negligent homicide and second-degree assault, the most serious of the charges faced by any of the responders. It was the shortest sentence allowed under the law.

Previously, Judge Mark Warner sentenced officer Randy Roedema to 14 months in jail for criminally negligent homicide and misdemeanor assault.