Adam Eidinger was ready for his day in court. He had video of his April smoke-in on the Capitol grounds to enter as evidence, a slew of arguments prepared about religious use of cannabis, and a star witness flown in from Portland, Oregon.

But this morning at D.C. Superior Court, after the government said it wasn’t prepared to try the case, Judge Shana Frost Matini dropped the possession charges altogether.

“We were ready to win this, but we won anyway through technicalities,” says Eidinger, a co-founder of DCMJ, which spearheaded the successful campaign to legalize recreational cannabis use in the District through a ballot referendum.

The smoke-in on April 24 was a planned act of civil disobedience to protest the continued criminalization of the drug. Cannabis is illegal to possess or use on federal grounds and illegal to use publicly in D.C.

Before the toking began, a number of religious speakers talked about why they used marijuana as part of an interfaith ceremony. The idea was to set up a legal battle over the threshold for religious use of marijuana under the First Amendment. “I had a great argument,” Eidinger says.

He was one of four people arrested at the event, though the only one to face trial. The D.C. Office of the Attorney General offered the other three community service and either a minimal or no fine, which they accepted.

“They offered me three months in jail,” says Eidinger. “Maybe I would have considered a plea deal, but not three months in jail—no way. It’s funny for [the government] to go from throwing the book at you to ‘we really don’t have a case to make.'”

But Robert Marus, spokesperson for the D.C. Office of the Attorney General, says that the office also offered Eidinger the same deal as the others.

Because the case was dismissed without prejudice, the D.C. AG has a year to decide if it wants to retry Eidinger. Marus declined to comment on whether the office would do so.

This is the second time in a month that Eidinger has had charges dropped over weed advocacy on Capitol grounds in April.

On April 20, Capitol Police arrested Eidinger and seven other people, and confiscated 1,000 joints that were part of a pot giveaway for Hill staffers on April 20.

Unlike the smoke-in, that giveaway was intended to be within the letter of the law. Under D.C. Code, people over the age of 21 can possess 2 ounces of cannabis and give away up to an ounce of it.

While all eight of the people arrested spent the night in jail, Eidinger was one of two to face possession charges, after the charging document stated that he he possessed 2.06 ounces of marijuana, 0.06 over the legal limit. However, he maintained that the weight included the joints’ paper and filter tips. Prosecutors dropped those charges in mid-August.

“I’m two for two now,” says Eidinger, who has also been arrested at a House Oversight Committee hearing and more than a dozen other times while protesting. He still wants to overturn the public use ban on cannabis, as well as challenge rules that prevent residents of federal housing from using the drug. “We need to regroup and figure out a game plan.”

Updated to reflect that this case was prosecuted by the D.C. Office of the Attorney General, and with comment from a spokesperson of that office.