BANGOR – A Penobscot County jury deliberated for about three hours Thursday before acquitting an Old Town man of charges of raping his girlfriend last spring in her apartment.

Barry Bard, 36, was convicted of lesser charges of criminal threatening and assault in connection with the April 16 assault, during which he repeatedly punched and kicked the 40-year-old victim.

The prosecution alleged that he raped her at knifepoint after the assault. Bard denied those charges.

On Thursday, the jury of eight men and four women found Bard innocent on two counts of gross sexual assault and criminal threatening with a dangerous weapon.

After Wednesday’s proceedings, Justice Andrew Mead dismissed an aggravated assault charge against Bard.

Bard, who has a lengthy criminal record, will be sentenced at a later date.

The most serious charge could carry a maximum five-year prison sentence. Bard has been incarcerated at Penobscot County Jail since his arrest a couple days after the beating.

After the verdict, Bard’s Bangor attorney, Brad McDonald, said he was pleased that his client was acquitted of the most serious charges.

“We were especially troubled by the allegations of gross sexual assault and glad to see the jury saw through those allegations,” he said. “Regarding the remaining issues, he will be considering his options.”

Assistant District Attorney Alice Clifford, in her closing argument, asked the jurors to carefully consider the graphic photographs entered into evidence. Some of the photographs, taken within days of the incident, showed a battered and swollen victim while others showed the swollen knuckles on both of Bard’s hands.

“You don’t get swollen knuckles like this from working on cars,” she told the jury, referring to the defendant’s explanation of the injury. “You get them from punching [the victim’s] face.”

During the three-day trial, the victim testified that Bard originally had told her to explain her injuries by saying that she had been attacked from behind at The Tavern, a Main Street bar.

The next day, however, she told police that Bard, her boyfriend for four months, caused her injuries during a beating that lasted for several hours and left her Front Street apartment splattered with blood.

On the stand Thursday, Bard told jurors that while he was responsible for some of the woman’s injuries, he inflicted them in self-defense after the victim bit his finger and refused to let go.

He said the victim’s other injuries – including a serious gash on her head – were suffered when she fell down the stairs twice while intoxicated.

In his closing, McDonald disputed the victim’s version of events, portraying her as a jealous drug addict who concocted the charges after learning of the defendant’s infidelities and discovering he had flushed her drugs down the toilet.

McDonald earlier had asked Bard to flex his muscles for the jury, and suggested that if his client had indeed beat the victim for hours, the damage would have been much worse.

The victim was treated at a city hospital and released.

Bard also was found guilty of violating a condition of release.