A district court on Thursday found a 24-year-old father not guilty of fatally assaulting his 5-month-old daughter in December last year, saying his statements could not be taken as evidence of his guilt as they were "not reliable."
Atsushi Nishikawa, presiding judge of the Nara District Court, said in handing down the ruling that the defendant, Naoya Takigawa, made inconsistent confessions when he admitted to having injured his daughter in order to eliminate the possibility of his wife being suspected.
The ruling also noted a lack of evidence regarding the details of the infant Shiori's head injuries because the prosecutors' case was based on such unreliable statements.
His defense attorney argued that Takigawa, who had pleaded not guilty, dropped the baby by accident, while the prosecutors had accused of him of having hit her in the face on a regular basis.
The prosecutors had sought an eight-year prison sentence, saying his violence had "escalated."
The trial was held under Japan's lay judge system, which involves citizen judges.
Takigawa was indicted in June on a charge of assault resulting in death. It was alleged that he killed his daughter by hitting her head against a wall and violently shaking her multiple times at his home in Tenri, Nara Prefecture, on Dec. 19 last year. The girl died two days later from brain damage.