A municipal official in Kitakyushu, indicted for molesting a woman on a train, was acquitted Tuesday.
The district court ruled that the woman's testimony could not be trusted.
Prosecutors claimed that the 56-year-old official touched the woman on a train on Aug. 1, 2012. They asked that he be sentenced to four months in prison.
But presiding Judge Kazuo Oizumi of the Fukuoka District Court's Kokura branch determined that rather than move away from the alleged perpetrator, the woman remained where she was and that her testimony was "untrustworthy."
"It may be possible that she was the victim of molestation, but it cannot be said the defendant is the culprit," Oizumi said.
The official's lawyers said the lack of fibers from the woman's clothes on his hands proved his innocence.