On Tuesday, an upstate judge acquitted the prison guard accused of kicking an inmate in the groin so hard he had to have a testicle removed. Judge Charles Dechon, presiding in the small Ulster County town of Wawarsing, deliberated just 20 minutes at the end of the two-day non-jury trial before finding corrections Officer Michael Bukowski not guilty of misdemeanor assault.

"The case was littered with reasonable doubt, inconsistent statements and credibility issues," Bukowski's lawyer Michael Catalinotto Jr. told the New York Times.

The charge stemmed from an incident last year at the Ulster County Correctional Facility, where prosecutors claimed Bukowski heard inmate Ramon Fabian talking during the morning head count and yelled for him to shut up. They alleged that, following the count, Bukowski made Fabian stand with his legs open against a wall, out of sight of surveillance cameras, and kicked him hard. That afternoon, doctors surgically removed Fabian's right testicle at an Albany hospital.

The Times used the case to highlight the byzantine disciplinary process in the state prison system that often allows brutish prison guards to keep their jobs despite strong evidence of wrongdoing.

As we wrote in September, prison officials made the unusual-for-them decision to fire him, but have so far been unsuccessful:

An arbitrator in Bukowski's case ruled that he did use excessive force, but that he should be suspended for 120 days instead of fired, because it was the first time he'd gotten into this kind of trouble. In a rare move, the Department of Corrections bucked the decision, saying Bukowski couldn't be allowed back on the job, so the guards union sued on his behalf. The union lost but is now appealing, and Bukowski is still collecting a paycheck (guards make $46,990 after a year; Bukowski has been on the force for seven).

Ulster County prosecutors indicted Bukowski in March. At trial, Catalinotto hammered on inconsistencies in witnesses' accounts, and on Fabian identifying another guard as the culprit in an initial lawsuit. Also, Fabian testified that he crawled back to his cell after being kicked, but another inmate recounted that he ran back to his cell "holding his private parts." Two guards testified they didn't see an indication that Fabian was seriously injured that morning, and one said he heard no reports of fights in the area.

Fabian told doctors another inmate attacked him, but testified that he made this up because he was scared to speak freely with another guard in his hospital room. Corrections officials singled out Bukowski from the beginning, but Catalinotto emphasized that Fabian did not.

"The first and only time he named Mr. Bukowski was in this trial," he said.

"The one thing for certain in this case," he said in his closing statement, "is that Mr. Bukowski is not the one who caused this injury."

Fabian told the Times he was "positive" Bukowski was his assailant, but said he didn't know his name at first.

"I’m mad. He didn’t get charged for what he did to me," he said. "If it would have been me, I would’ve been locked up."

Catalinotto told a Daily Freeman reporter that Bukowski is eager to get back on the job.

"Justice was served," he said. "Now Mr. Bukowski can pick up the pieces from his life that has been disrupted as a result of these pending charges and hopefully get back to work as a correction officer."

Judge Dechon worked for 21 years as a state police investigator, according to his Linkedin profile, and in the course of his duties trained local police and workers in several state agencies, including the Department of Corrections.