A grand jury in Lexington, Ky., has refused to indict two men who hung an effigy of Barack Obama on the University of Kentucky campus last fall, their lawyer told the Lexington Herald-Leader.

The two men — Joe Fischer, who was then a senior at the university and has since graduated, and Hunter Bush, a former student at Bluegrass Community and Technical College — were arrested in October after authorities found the effigy hanging from a tree outside the university’s Mines and Minerals Building. They were charged with second-degree burglary, theft by unlawful taking, and disorderly conduct. The grand jury dismissed those charges today.

Both men expressed remorse for their action, saying they were making a political statement and had not realized how inflammatory it would be. The incident was widely denounced at the time, and the university’s president, Lee T. Todd Jr., apologized to Mr. Obama on the institution’s behalf. —Charles Huckabee