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GRAHAM — After deliberating for about an hour, a jury found a Burlington man not guilty Thursday of cockfighting and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

The trial of Michael Thomas Collins, 51, of Troendly Street, and Jack Daniel Hill, 44, of Flora Drive, began Tuesday in Alamance County Superior Court.

Superior Court Judge Wayne Abernathy dismissed several charges against the men during the trial. On Wednesday, he dismissed a count of cruelty to animals against Collins, charged for cutting off a rooster's spurs. The judge ruled the practice doesn't harm the animals and is common among chicken farmers. On Wednesday, he also dropped the cockfighting charge against Hill, saying Hill wasn't at the scene when the alleged fight occurred.

Just before closing arguments on Thursday afternoon, Abernathy dismissed Hill's last remaining charge, of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, ruling that owning and selling game roosters is not a crime.

The case stemmed from an undercover operation by the Alamance County Sheriff's Office, which sent two detectives to purchase a fighting rooster from Collins on May 6. The officer told Collins he wanted an aggressive rooster. Collins took the bird to a residence on Flora Drive, where his rooster squared off and tussled with a rooster there. The event was caught by one of the detectives, Brandon Jones, on video.

The detectives purchased both roosters for $60 and $40.

A 13-year-old boy, a nephew of Hill's, pleaded to participating in a cockfight in juvenile court.

In closing arguments, Alamance County Assistant District Attorney Paul Soderberg argued that the 36-second altercation between the two roosters constituted a cockfight. He showed jurors video of Collins and the juvenile agitating the roosters before dropping them on the ground together. Much of the alleged cockfight happened out of the video's frame. When the chickens are in the frame, they are pecking at each other and flapping their wings.

North Carolina law doesn't define a cockfight other than "the fighting of a cock."

Soderberg told the jury that Collins set up the fight and profited from the fight because his rooster sold after a display of aggression.

Soderberg also ran through a series of things Collins was recorded as saying in the undercover video, describing the rooster as "a fighter," and "a mean joker," and saying "he's won before." Collins also referenced "fighting stuff" in the video, Soderberg said.

Because a boy was involved in the scene and later pleaded to cockfighting, Collins was guilty of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, Soderberg told the jury.

Defense attorney Natalie Jones told jurors the sheriff department's investigation was a flawed "sting operation."

"We're glad law enforcement is there but they got this one wrong," Natalie Jones told jurors. "They did an incomplete investigation. They had limited knowledge about (raising fowl). At the end of this sting operation, they had an opportunity to go down the road 10 miles where real cockfighting was supposedly taking place. Did they go? ... If they had done due diligence, they would have found a real cockfight and not encouraged my client to participate in what they believed was a cockfight."

She described the alleged cockfight as a scuffle, during which neither bird was injured, and pointed out that roosters are naturally aggressive toward each other.

Natalie Jones characterized Collins as a gentle, animal-loving man who makes his living raising and selling chickens. He was just trying to make a sale, she told the jury.

On the stand Thursday, Collins said he'd raised chickens since he was 12 but had never attended a cockfight. He also testified that he'd never bred or trained fighting roosters.

Collins testified the undercover agents asked him six or seven times if the game rooster was aggressive and wanted him to demonstrate the rooster's aggressiveness. Collins said he "talked a lot of smack" to try and sell the rooster to the agents and that "if you want to sell you got to talk a good game."