Brooklyn federal court’s first jury trial of the year ended with an acquittal late Thursday, with defendant Keith Levy found not guilty of a single count of threatening to harm his parole officer.

Levy’s trial kicked off the Eastern District of New York’s second attempt to relaunch jury trials amid the pandemic. The earlier effort in the fall of 2020 was cut off amid another rise in COVID-19 cases in New York, but increased access to vaccines and consensus about safety practices has left observers hopeful that trials will continue through the final months of the pandemic.