"I'm innocent," a man who served more than 20 years of a life term over an 11-year-old girl's death in a 1995 house fire declared Thursday as a retrial was held in the Osaka District Court.

Tatsuhiro Boku, 50, is set to be acquitted along with his de facto wife and ex-inmate Keiko Aoki, the 52-year-old mother of the girl, after prosecutors decided not to pursue fresh guilty verdicts for the pair.

The retrial concluded the same day. The court is expected to pronounce Boku not guilty on Aug. 10.