[Puffer Fish]

Two paramedics have been arrested and charged for a mistake that led to a man's death.
The man was intoxicated and delusional. The paramedics put him on a stretcher to transport him into the ambulance, but put him on the stretcher face-down.

While in the ambulance, the paramedics allegedly put the patient on a paramedic stretcher while he was positioned face-down and restrained him. An autopsy determined the patient's cause of death was asphyxia and had been caused by being restrained with straps across his back while face down on the stretcher.

Illinois paramedics charged with 1st-degree murder appear in court as wrongful death lawsuit announced - ABC News, January 19, 2023
https://abcnews.go.com/US/illinois-para ... d=96525682
Two Springfield EMS workers charged with first-degree murder (wcia.com) , Danny Connolly, Theodora Koulouvaris, January 10, 2023
https://www.wcia.com/news/sangamon-coun ... ee-murder/

One reason they perhaps might have put him face-down is they were afraid that if he vomited, he might choke on his own vomit. This issue can sometimes cause intoxicated people to die.

Is it really fair to have arrested the paramedics for this?
Yes, what they did ended up causing a death, but it was a very simple mistake to make, the chance that what they did would cause death was small. And they may have even had some justifiable reason to do what they did, even if it was still overall a mistake.

One factor that may be prejudicing the authorities is that paramedics treated the drunk patient with disrespect and seeming indifference; the paramedics were white, the patient was black. Apparently police were already on the scene before the paramedics and had been called due to the patient's drunken behavior.


The court system can sometimes "coerce" defendants to plead guilty or agree to pay out in lawsuits even if they do not believe they are guilty. If they don't agree, the defendant risks something even worse happening to them, more prison time or having to pay more money.

[Puffer Fish]

The judge also set the bail of the paramedics at $1 million each. They are still sitting in prison.

Excessively high bail is another way to pressure guilty pleas out of defendants. They will likely be sitting in prison for a year and a half before the trial anyway, so being offered a plea bargain of, say, only having to serve two years in prison would probably seem like a good option, having the certainty that they would not risk spending a longer time in prison.

Now, you can argue about whether the bail was obviously too high, but even if this is seen as a form of "murder", given the situation we would expect any prison time to be much less than an ordinary murder, and so the bail amount that the judge set does seem far too high (in my opinion, at least).