From the piece in the Progressive:

On May 11, 2004, Kurtz’s wife had a heart attack. He called 911. The police arrived, and even though his wife was dying, they became suspicious of his artwork, which included Petri dishes with transgenic bacteria—part of an exhibition that he was entering at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.

The cops called the FBI, and agents nabbed him the next day as he was going to the funeral home.

Eventually, Kurtz, a founder of the Critical Arts Ensemble, was charged not with bioterrorism but with mail and wire fraud. The government alleged that he illegally obtained $256 worth of bacteria from Robert Ferrell of the department of genetics at the University of Pittsburgh, who had ordered it for him.

Last fall, Ferrell, very ill with lymphoma, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor to make the feds go away.

Kurtz kept fighting.

And on April 21, Federal Judge Richard Arcara dismissed the indictment against Kurtz.

[more at the above links] 

The CTheory.net take on the prosecution of Steve Kurtz:

When Taste Politics Meet Terror
The Critical Art Ensemble on Trial
[1000 DAYS OF THEORY, #7 (6/14/2005)]
Joan Hawkins

early on, in 2004, CTheory.net called on its readers to support Steve Kurtz.