Steve Kurtz is in the clear. At least for now.

A professor of visual studies at the University of Buffalo, Kurtz has been living a nightmare for the past four years.

On May 11, 2004, Kurtz’s wife had a heart attack. He called 911. The police arrived, and even though his wife was dying, they became suspicious of his artwork, which included Petri dishes with transgenic bacteria—part of an exhibition that he was entering at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.

The cops called the FBI, and agents nabbed him the next day as he was going to the funeral home.

Eventually, Kurtz, a founder of the Critical Arts Ensemble, was charged not with bioterrorism but with mail and wire fraud. The government alleged that he illegally obtained $256 worth of bacteria from Robert Ferrell of the department of genetics at the University of Pittsburgh, who had ordered it for him.

Last fall, Ferrell, very ill with lymphoma, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor to make the feds go away.

Kurtz kept fighting.

And on April 21, Federal Judge Richard Arcara dismissed the indictment against Kurtz.

“The indictment is insufficient on its face,” ruled Arcara, noting that the company that sold the bacteria to Ferrell was not defrauded at all since it was paid for the biological agents, and that the University of Pittsburgh wasn’t defrauded, either.

Kurtz reacted, he says, with “partial relief, cautious optimism, and quite a bit of surprise. The common wisdom is federal indictments are never dismissed.”

To date, lawyers’ fees have run to about $200,000, Kurtz says, but the Critical Arts Ensemble Defense Fund has raised more than that, so it hasn’t cost Kurtz anything monetarily.

But that doesn’t mean there has been no cost to him.

“It’s given me a lot of anxiety,” he says. “I imagine when you have adrenaline working through your system day after day, year after year, it’s got to take something off your life. It’s wracked my body a little bit.”

Still, Kurtz says he’s been inspired by the support he’s received.

“It’s kind of encouraging, people coming together, fighting the good fight, and for once winning,” he says. “We’ve been watching our Constitution melt away. Here, even a small victory like this, at least it’s something.”

The government has until May 21 to file an appeal.

Says Kurtz: “Keep your fingers crossed.”