After more than three hours of deliberation Wednesday, a jury found Ted Hart not guilty of a felony weapons charge.

In August 2014, the state charged Hart, 29, with third-degree misconduct involving a weapon for residing in a residence containing a concealable firearm after a probation officer found a Ruger handgun in Hart’s closet. Hart was on probation for felony driving under the influence at the time.

In April, Hart’s first trial resulted in a hung jury, but assistant district attorney Amy Paige chose to retry the case.

After this week’s trial, which spanned Tuesday and Wednesday, Hart said he was “relieved and grateful” to be acquitted.

“I had a good feeling going into (jury deliberation), but right before the verdict was read, I had a wave of emotions, possibilities, doubts,” Hart said.

Hart said he felt the momentum of the trial shift in his favor part-way through the proceedings, and thanked his public defender Tim Ayer for doing a “phenomenal job.”

Ayer said he believed he laid out a strong case, and was glad the jury “looked at the case carefully and considered the whole picture.”

The trial began Monday morning with opening arguments, with district attorney Paige claiming Hart, a felon, knew the handgun was in the closet at his 3 Mile Haines Highway residence. Paige pointed to several documents Hart had signed to demonstrate he understood he was a felon, and was aware of the conditions of his probation.

Paige also called former Haines Borough police chief Bill Musser to the stand to testify that he hadn’t given written permission to Hart to keep a concealable weapon in his residence. (According to statute, a felon can obtain written authorization from the head of a community’s law enforcement agency to reside in a dwelling with a concealable weapon.)

Musser, who responded to the residence, stated Hart answered in the affirmative when Musser asked if Hart was aware he couldn’t have the handgun in the house. Probation officer Sara Dallas, another witness for the prosecution, also testified that Hart was aware of the gun’s presence in the house, as he told her about it when she asked if there were any firearms in the residence.

Paige also had to convince the jury the gun was concealable, a key element in proving her case. Paige said the gun could easily be concealed under a hoodie, a Carhartt jacket or some other kind of bulky clothing.

Defense attorney Ayer argued any weapon is concealable if you try hard enough, stating one could put a bazooka on his or her back and cover it with a blanket.

Ayer also contended that while Musser said he didn’t grant permission, there was no evidence former police chief Gary Lowe and former interim chief Simon Ford hadn’t granted permission.

When called to the stand, former officer Adam Patterson testified the police department’s record-keeping under Lowe was poor and that the department didn’t have an overarching policy on how to keep records. “There wasn’t much of a record-keeping system,” Patterson said.

Patterson said Ford was better than Lowe, but there was still no real method for record-keeping.

Ayer contended that if the state wanted to prove permission didn’t exist, they should have called Lowe and Ford to the stand to testify permission had never been granted during the time Hart was on probation.

Ayer also called Hart’s mother Harriet Brouillette to the stand to testify that Hart was the tribally-appointed caretaker of his grandfather’s belongings – including the Ruger handgun – after Brouillette’s father died. According to Native tradition, Hart was not to distribute or move the belongings until the grieving period ended.

After the trial, juror Deborah Vogt said she didn’t believe the state proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt.

“There were different things that different jurors relied on. I wasn’t sure about the concealable part for the weapon, and even if some people thought it was concealable, whether the defendant knew that was what he was supposed to be not having,” Vogt said.

Vogt said not all the jurors went into the deliberation room with the same opinion as they had coming out. “There were some people who changed their minds,” she said.

“I think people thought there was a whole lot else the state could have done to prove the case,” she added, such as using Lowe and Ford as witnesses.

Paige relied on a lot of assumptions and references to “standard operating procedures,” Vogt said, factors that didn’t sit well with the jury. “It just seemed to some of us there was an awful lot of that.”

The state will still pursue a probation violation against Hart, which requires a much lower burden of proof than an additional criminal charge.