OSAKA -- The Osaka High Public Prosecutor's Office formally decided Friday not to appeal the case of a former nursery school teacher acquitted three times of murdering a boy in her care in 1974.
The trial had gone on for an unprecedented 21 years by the time 40-year-old Etsuko Yamada was acquitted for the third time Sept. 29 by the Osaka High Court.
Prosecutors had come under mounting pressure not to appeal after the latest ruling, judicial sources said, because of the difficulties involved in taking the matter to the Supreme Court, considering the fact that the initial indictment was handed down 21 years ago.