KNOX — The drugs and weapons charges against the man arrested after his stepmother’s horse was killed in May were adjourned in contemplation of dismissal in town court, with Judge Jean Gagnon presiding on Oct. 8.

Unless Shawn Duncan is charged again within the next six months, the case records would be sealed, as if his most recent arrest never happened.

In May, Duncan’s police mug shot appeared in several news sources as far away as New York City, including The Enterprise, reporting on his initial arrest, stemming from an investigation into the killing of a retired Thoroughbred racehorse rescued by his father, Robert Duncan, and found dead in its Westerlo pasture with an arrow in its side.

After the horse was found, police secured a search warrant through Westerlo Town Court, based on interviews with family members. Deputies seized several bows and arrows, 15 grams of marijuana, a smoking pipe, and a stun gun from Duncan’s Knox home, according to the Albany County Sheriff’s Office. He was arrested for third-degree criminal possession of a weapon, a Class D felony, and unlawful possession of marijuana, a violation, and sent to Albany County’s jail without bail.

Now out of jail, Duncan denies that he killed the horse and he has asked for his seized property to be returned, his attorney, Lee Greenstein, said Wednesday.

“Our position is their investigation fell flat because those were unfounded suspicions and the search warrant was inadequate,” said Greenstein. “They had insufficient facts to get a search warrant to go into my client’s home.”

Asked about the case’s result, Cecilia Walsh, spokeswoman for the Albany County District Attorney’s Office responded in an email, “Based on the facts and circumstances presented to us in this matter, the resolution of an Adjournment in Contemplation of Dismissal was deemed the most appropriate action to resolve this case.”

Police are still awaiting results of a laboratory analysis of two pieces of evidence relating to the horse’s death; one was returned with an “inconclusive result,” according to Inspector William Riley with the sheriff’s office. So far, there are no other leads or suspects in the investigation, he said.

Robert Duncan and his wife, Lorraine Duncan, said Wednesday they don’t know any additional information about their horse’s death.

“We basically thought that was coming,” Robert Duncan said of his son’s result in court. “We got from the sheriff’s that they screwed up the search and didn’t do it legally.”

An adjournment in contemplation of dismissal is not an admission of guilt, like a plea often is, but it makes success in a civil suit, such as a claim of false arrest, more difficult.

The slain horse, Belle, was six years old, Robert Duncan said, and could have lived for 30 more years.

“We probably never will know for sure,” Robert Duncan said of who killed Belle.

“He never blamed Shawn and I never blamed Shawn,” Lorraine Duncan said of her husband, describing tensions in the family.

In May, Lorraine Duncan acknowledged that Shawn and Robert Duncan had a disagreement shortly before Belle was found dead but she would not elaborate, hoping that her stepson would not be found responsible.

“If he had known that was a violation of his probation, it would never have been in our house,” his wife, Siobhan Duncan, said in June of the stun gun, which Duncan was not allowed to have as a convicted felon. The arrest report says the gun was in their bedroom. She said the bows and arrows that police found were used by their children.

Shawn Duncan’s case was sent from Albany County Court to town court in Knox in August when his probation violation was withdrawn and his felony weapons charge was reduced to a misdemeanor.

Duncan was in Knox Town Court in 2010, when he and Siobhan Duncan had been arrested at a Thompsons Lake campground for a felony and two misdemeanor charges as they were found with others in a trailer that had drugs inside. He had been arrested in 2003 when the sheriff’s office found dozens of marijuana plants in his home, and he was sentenced to jail as a teen after he was charged with others for burglarizing homes.