The Osaka High Court on Thursday upheld a lower court's acquittal of a man previously sentenced to death for murdering his daughter-in-law and her son before setting fire to their Osaka apartment in 2002.
Takemitsu Mori, a 59-year-old prison guard on administrative leave, was acquitted by the Osaka District Court in March 2012 after the Supreme Court ordered a retrial, repealing the high court's death sentence in a rare decision.
The focus of the case was what to make of the circumstantial evidence presented by the prosecutors while Mori consistently denied the charges, saying he had never entered the apartment.