A former Texas police officer accused of causing the death of his K-9 partner was acquitted of the charge Wednesday by a jury in the Walker County, Texas Court of Law.

Gary Laws was found not guilty of cruelty to non-livestock animals, a class C misdemeanor, following two days of testimony. It took the jury of four women and two men less than an hour to reach a verdict.

As Judge Tracy Sorensen announced the jury’s decision, Laws, who resigned from the Madisonville Police Department in October, had a look of relief and his family members sitting in the front of the courtroom began to cry.

“We’re just glad they did the right thing,” Laws’ defense attorney Gregory Cagle said of the verdict.

During testimony Wednesday, the jury watched a recording of Texas Ranger Steve Jeter’s interview with Laws on Sept. 15, 2014, three days after the police dog known as Baron was found dead in the back of Laws’ patrol vehicle after being left inside the cab for several hours in the heat at Laws’ residence.

Laws told Jeter in the interview that he returned home following a long shift with the Madisonville, Texas Police Department about 11:30 a.m. on Sept. 12, 2014, and got out of his vehicle to speak with his mother, who lives next door and was outside walking her dogs. Laws said he always follows a “routine” when he gets home to get Baron out of the vehicle, but did not know what changed that the day the dog died.

“Usually I get out of my car, take off my gun belt and put it in the seat and put (Baron) on a leash,” Laws said in the recording. “… I’ve never forgotten before. Never came close to forgetting.”

Laws said after he talked to his mother and texted a fellow officer about work, he went inside and fell asleep. It wasn’t until his wife returned home later that afternoon that they discovered Baron had been left in the vehicle.

When Jeter asked if Baron’s death was heat related, Laws replied, “Yeah. My fault.”

Laws said a couple of times in the interview that Baron’s death was weighing heavily on him.

“I just feel so guilty because I know he was watching me walk away,” the Marine Corps veteran said. “… Man I love that dog. He wasn’t even like a dog to me.”

Laws did admit in the interview that when he first found Baron dead, “he went into panic mode” and “thought about burying him.”

Assistant District Attorney Stephanie Stroud brought that up in closing arguments.

“Why would you think about burying it and hiding it if he didn’t think he did anything wrong?” Stroud asked the jury.

The prosecution argued that Laws was responsible for Baron and that he failed to provide food, water and shelter to protect the dog from harm and Baron died as a result of that.

The defense called the incident a “horrible mistake.”

“People make mistakes that are also crimes,” Stroud said during her closing argument.

The jury did not believe Laws committed a crime.

Stark writes for The Huntsville (Texas) Item.