All three defendants in the Rensselaer County ballot fraud trial have been found not guilty of all charges. It came as the second day of jury deliberations was beginning on Wednesday.

Rich Crist, Jim Gordon, and Leslie Wallace are all high-ranking members of Rensselaer County Executive Steve McLaughlin’s administration, who was not charged in the case.

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Crist, Gordon and Wallace were charged with being part of a conspiracy to rig local elections back in 2021. Gordon faced an additional charge of witness tampering. Wallace was accused of lying to the FBI during the course of the investigation.

As the jurors arrived at 9:15 a.m. for the second day of deliberations, they entered the courtroom and listened to 2 ½ hours of read back testimony. That took up the entire morning.

The testimony they heard was from several county employees. The employees testified that they didn’t know that they were signing absentee ballots, that they had no intention of voting themselves and that they signed the envelopes fearful of losing their jobs.

There was jubilation, relief, and applause when the verdicts were read out loud in the jam packed courtroom.

Hear reaction from outside court, by watching the video of Dan Levy’s story.