A federal jury Friday returned not guilty verdicts in the trial of FBI agent W. Joseph Astarita, accused of lying to conceal that he fired two shots at the truck of refuge occupation spokesman Robert "LaVoy" Finicum" in January 2016.

The jury of nine men and three women deliberated for about six hours over two days after a three-week trial in Portland before U.S. District Judge Robert E. Jones. They acquitted Astarita on two counts of making a false statement and one count of obstruction of justice.

Astarita, 41, a member of the FBI's elite Hostage Rescue Team, looked straight ahead but squeezed the hands of defense lawyers Robert Cary and Meghan Ferguson sitting on either side of him as the court clerk read the verdicts about 2:45 p.m.

Once the jury left, Astarita's attorneys took turns enveloping him in strong hugs.

The team of prosecutors quietly filed out of the courtroom.

The verdict marks the latest in a series of daunting losses for prosecutors trying people involved in the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, though this case targeted a federal agent who had been working on the government's side of the confrontation.

Astarita had been on the Hostage Rescue Team for only eight months at the time of the Jan. 26, 2016, shooting at a highway roadblock in eastern Oregon. He spent hours on the witness stand over two days and testified that he's never fired his weapon in the line of duty during his 13 years with the FBI.

He said he didn't independently recall where he was standing at the time of the disputed shots and said he heard no gunshots that day, though investigators found eight were fired at the roadblock. He said he was wearing a hearing-protection headset attached to his helmet.

"I had no indication I had fired. I didn't hear it, feel it, see it that day,'' he told jurors this week.

With Astarita's acquittal, the mystery remains as to who fired twice after Finicum swerved into a snowbank at the roadblock on U.S. 395 in Harney County, stepped from his truck with his hands in the air and shouted, "Go ahead and shoot me.''

One shot hit the roof of the truck's cab and shattered the rear driver's side window and the other missed entirely - both distinctly audible on the video captured by rear seat passenger Shawna Cox.

Moments later, two state police SWAT officers shot and killed Finicum after he had walked away from his truck and was seen reaching into his inner left jacket pocket where police said he had a loaded 9mm Ruger pistol. The fatal shooting was ruled justified by the Deschutes County district attorney.

Defense lawyers Robert Cary, based in Washington, D.C., and Portland defense lawyer David Angeli called Astarita "a hero who puts his life on the line for his country every day."

"We are grateful to the men and women of the jury who saw through a case that never should have been brought," they said in a statement. "Joe Astarita is innocent, and it was our privilege and honor to represent him.''

Astarita remains on the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team and has continued to work since he was indicted a year ago. He was never placed on leave.

Oregon U.S. Attorney Billy J. Williams thanked the jury for its consideration.

"We strongly believe this case needed to be brought before the court and decided by a jury,'' Williams said in a statement. "Our system of justice relies on the absolute integrity of law enforcement officials at all levels of government.''

Michael E. Horowitz, U.S. Department of Justice inspector general, thanked the Deschutes County Sheriff's Office and the Major Incident Team for its assistance in investigating Astarita.

Horowitz said his office respects the jury's verdict. "We will continue to investigate allegations of misconduct by Department of Justice employees to ensure the integrity of our law enforcement components,'' he said.

Astarita was among a host of FBI agents and state police officers trying to arrest leaders of the armed refuge takeover as they drove off the bird sanctuary to a community meeting 100 miles away along remote U.S. 395.

The bureau faced sustained scrutiny during the occupation as critics anxiously watched to see if its response would mirror the deadly sieges in Waco, Texas, and Ruby Ridge in Idaho, and others questioned why law enforcement hadn't moved in more rapidly, allowing the occupiers to freely come and go from the refuge for weeks.

During Astarita's trial, defense lawyers pointed out repeatedly that none of the more than 40 witnesses who testified saw or heard Astarita fire his rifle and prosecutors presented no physical evidence that definitively tied him to the disputed shots.

The prosecution relied largely on circumstantial evidence and forensic analyses, pinpointing Astarita as the only officer who could have fired the two shots based on their expert Michael Haag's determination of the bullet's path and Astarita's location at the time the shots rang out.

An aerial FBI video also caught Astarita standing with his rifle shouldered beside the open passenger door of a state police truck in the middle of the highway roadblock when the shots occurred, prosecutors said.

Astarita's lawyers argued that the video image was too fuzzy to conclude much of anything. They identified the most likely shooter as one of the state police SWAT officers, identified in court only as Officer 1 due to security concerns.

Officer 1 recklessly "let loose with three rounds'' into Finicum's truck as it barreled toward the roadblock, even though he acknowledged that he couldn't see the driver or passengers, Angeli said. Officer 1 then rushed into the snowbank as Finicum walked away from his truck without using any cover and fired two shots into his back, Angeli said.

Angeli also accused Officer 1of lying on the witness stand when he claimed he told investigators last year that he was startled by a loud noise to his right as he was moving from east to west across U.S. 395 at the time of the disputed shots. Angeli reminded jurors that no investigator heard that claim until Officer 1 shared that with prosecutors a month before the trial, as the lead case agent, Deschutes County Sheriff's Detective Ron Brown, confirmed on the witness stand.

Two and a half years after the shooting, no one has acknowledged taking the two shots in question, and investigators recovered only two shell casings of eight shots fired at the roadblock.

Government prosecutors also failed to convict the leaders of the refuge occupation, including Ammon Bundy and his brother Ryan Bundy, after a lengthy trial in 2016 in a decision that emboldened like-minded activists fighting federal ownership of public land.

Astarita remains on the job but may now face an internal FBI administrative review of the allegations. In a pretrial hearing, his lawyers said Astarita had exhausted his life savings on the experts hired for his case.

Deschutes County Sheriff L. Shane Nelson, whose agency led the initial inquiry into the disputed shots, said he trusts the criminal justice process, but the verdicts don't alter his beliefs or earlier statements.

When Astarita was indicted in June 2017, Nelson credited his investigators for their tenaciousness and said he was "disappointed and angry'' that the FBI agent's alleged deceit and actions "damage the integrity of the entire law enforcement profession.''

"The Deschutes County Sheriff's Office and Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General did our jobs to investigate this thoroughly,'' he said Friday. "I support and trust Inspector General Michael Horowitz as he reviews this case administratively to identify any areas of improvement that will identify mistakes made by the FBI Hostage Rescue Team in this case and increase transparency for law enforcement.''

Nelson also said he didn't buy the argument by Astarita's defense that an Oregon State Police SWAT officer took the disputed shots. "There is one thing I am sure of and that is no one from the Oregon State Police fired those two shots,'' he said.

Finicum's wife, Jeanette Finicum, has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the FBI and state police in the fatal shooting of her 54-old husband, a rancher from Arizona who was easily recognizable during the occupation, wearing earmuffs under his cowboy hat and shown sitting at the refuge entrance, a gun across his lap and a blue tarp over his head to keep warm on a frigid evening.

She sat through most of the trial, taking notes to prepare for her own civil case. She said she felt the prosecutors didn't do a robust enough job of questioning Astarita and his colleagues on the Hostage Rescue Team, who echoed that they didn't hear gunshots that day and that all were doing a standard "sensitive items" check for gear and remnants of flash-bang grenades at the shooting scene.

"So many questions not asked and so many questions not answered,'' Jeanette Finicum said. But she also thanked the jury for its service.

Brian Levin, a former New York Police officer who has worked closely with the FBI and now is director of California State University's Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, said the verdict "plays into the narrative that there's some kind of government coverup,'' although the alleged coverup wasn't proven in court by prosecutors.

"The burden was on the prosecution,'' Levin said. "This was not a trial as to whether or not the use of force was justified. This was about who was where and who took the shots. The defense was able to introduce enough ambiguity that it precluded the prosecution from meeting its burden.''

-- Maxine Bernstein

mbernstein@oregonian.com

503-221-8212

@maxoregonian