Minor parts of the long-running legal case are still heading to the Court of Appeal.
The Prosecutor General will not appeal the acquittal of Anneli Auer and Jens Ihle on sexual offence charges.
This means the decision by the District Court of Southwest Finland will remain legally binding. The Auer case has spanned nearly two decades and involved multiple legal proceedings.
At the end of April, the district court dismissed all sexual abuse charges against the pair.
Although Prosecutor General Ari-Pekka Koivisto expressed dissatisfaction with the acquittal in May, prosecutors have now decided not to challenge that part of the ruling.
However, the case is not entirely over.
The prosecutor will still appeal to the Court of Appeal over assault convictions that were rejected by the district court but had not previously been overturned by the Supreme Court. The prosecution is also challenging the district court’s ruling on attorney fees.
The District Court of Southwest Finland ordered the state to pay more than 400,000 euros in legal expenses, including around 136,000 euros to Ihle’s lawyer, Kaarle Gummerus.
The state must also compensate Auer’s lawyer, Markku Fredman, for legal costs of approximately 232,000 euros.
Years of legal process
The district court’s acquittal relied heavily on testimony from Auer’s three younger children, who told the court the alleged abuse never occurred and that they had been pressured into making false allegations.
Auer was twice convicted by a district court of murdering her husband, but both convictions were later overturned on appeal. The 2006 killing was never solved.
While Auer was in custody, her children were placed with a foster family, during which allegations of earlier sexual abuse emerged. That led to a separate criminal case in which Auer and her former partner, Ihle, received lengthy prison sentences — convictions that the district court has now overturned.
