The judge overseeing the trial of Nathan Woodyard, the third Aurora police officer on trial in connection with Elijah McClain’s 2019 death, denied a request Monday by Woodyard’s defense attorneys to acquit the officer based on their argument prosecutors have not proven their case.

17th Judicial District Judge Mark Warner’s ruling set the stage for Woodyard’s defense attorneys to begin calling witnesses this week. One of their key witnesses will be a physician who has opined the paramedics who gave McClain an overdose of ketamine after his struggle with police broke from their standard of care.

Prosecutors from the Colorado Attorney General’s office wrapped up their case on Friday with Roger Mitchell, a forensic pathologist who believes McClain’s death was a homicide and that the struggle with police contributed.

Woodyard faces charges in Adams County of reckless manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide in connection with McClain’s death. He was the first officer to contact McClain the night of Aug. 24, 2019 as the 23-year-old walked home from a convenience store.

A few minutes after the encounter began, Woodyard used a neck hold on McClain that temporarily restricts oxygen to a person’s brain and can induce brief unconsciousness. A paramedic called to the scene later injected McClain with ketamine, a sedative. He stopped breathing and went into cardiac arrest shortly after.

A doctor pronounced him brain dead three days later.

Two of the prosecutors’ medical experts said they believe the struggle with police made McClain more vulnerable to the ketamine injection. Mitchell testified he believes the carotid hold kicked off a cycle of increased carbon dioxide buildup in his blood as he labored to breathe, causing him to vomit and then inhale it into his lungs because he couldn’t clear his airway while lying handcuffed on the ground.

Andrew Ho, one of Woodyard’s defense attorneys, argued prosecutors didn’t prove the officer is responsible for McClain’s death, either directly or complicitly, based on others’ actions. He pointed out that prosecutors’ experts believe the ketamine injection ultimately killed McClain. Ho also reiterated defense’s argument that Woodyard wasn’t responsible either for restraining McClain or making the decision to administer ketamine, since the officer had stepped away from the struggle for much of it and didn’t have authority to make medical decisions.

“We must make illogical leaps and bounds to connect the dots, when the dots should not be connected,” Ho said.

Warner acknowledged the prosecutors’ experts had conflicting opinions about whether the officers contributed to McClain’s death. But he said the credibility of their opinions, and whether Woodyard heard McClain’s pleas he couldn’t breathe, is for the jury to decide.

“I’m not supposed to be the 13th juror,” he said.

Woodyard and two other officers, Jason Rosenblatt and Randy Roedema, had responded that night in August 2019 to a 911 call by a teenager who believed McClain looked “sketchy” after he saw McClain wearing a black mask and waving his arms. He was listening to music and often wore a face mask to keep warm, prosecutors say.

Two paramedics, Jeremy Cooper and Peter Cichuniec, also face charges and are scheduled to go to trial next month. Among Woodyard’s defense witnesses, his attorneys indicated they plan to call Nadia Tereshchenko, a physician, to testify about training and protocols for paramedics. She testified to the grand jury that indicted the police officers and paramedics for McClain’s death she believes the paramedics “did not act in a manner expected of a reasonable and prudent paramedic under the same circumstances.”

The paramedics didn’t assess McClain when they got to the scene, misdiagnosed him with excited delirium, gave him an overdose of ketamine and did not provide medical care after the injection, according to Tereshchenko’s grand jury testimony.

A jury convicted Officer Roedema on Oct. 12 of criminally negligent homicide and third-degree assault, the least serious charges he faced, but acquitted former officer Rosenblatt on all counts.