The Vaasa Court of Appeal found Auer not guilty of murdering her husband Jukka Lahti in 2006. The Court said that the prosecutor had the burden of proof when it came to murder or manslaughter, while Auer had no responsibility to provide evidence for her innocence, or to contribute towards investigation to determine her guilt.
According to the Court, unreliable evidence due to deficiencies in the preliminary investigation could not be allowed to adversely affect an accused, especially in the case of alleged serious crimes.
One member of the Court of Appeal would have rejected Auer’s appeal and upheld the earlier District Court conviction.
Reasonable doubt over Auer’s guilt
The Court of Appeal agreed with the District Court that it was not proved that the sounds of distress heard in the background of Auer’s emergency phone call in Ulvila originated from a sound recording made earlier.
The Court also questioned the prosecutor’s evidence relating to the hearings involving Auer’s children. Their accounts of the murder night were not credible or compatible with the accounts given to the Police in their technical investigation, the Court said.
The Court of Appeal asserted that given the factors that suggest an outside perpetrator, and because it had not been shown that Auer had staged the crime, there was considerable doubt as to her guilt.
Therefore, the Court concluded, it had not been shown that Auer had murdered Lahti in the way described in the charges brought against her, and so the charge of murder or manslaughter had to be dropped.
Long court case
This was the second time Anneli Auer was tried in the Court of Appeals. In 2010, the District Court sentenced Auer to life imprisonment for killing her husband. Auer took the case to the Court of Appeal.
In July 2011 the Court of Appeal dropped the charges against Auer due to insufficient evidence. The case went to the High Court, which remitted it to the District Court due to new evidence presented by the prosecutor.
Thursday’s verdict can be appealed, and a retrial sought from the High Court.
In an unrelated case, Auer was convicted of sexual abuse of children. She is currently sitting a seven and a half-year prison sentence but is due to be released this summer.
