Esa Teittinen was convicted in 2010 of murdering a 70-year-old man by drowning him in a bathtub in Stockholm in December 2009, and sentenced to 15 years in prison. He maintained his innocence throughout.
The original investigation had significant gaps. No crime-scene examination was conducted. The cause of death was never established. A female witness who was also in the apartment changed her account over time, and her later testimony that she saw Teittinen push the man’s head underwater came only in later interviews.1
Reopening and acquittal
Teittinen’s lawyer, Marko Tuhkanen, filed a reopening petition with the Supreme Court. A new reconstruction of the crime scene was conducted, and the Supreme Court granted reopening in early 2018, a rare outcome for a murder conviction.2
Teittinen was released in August 2018 pending judgment, and the Svea Court of Appeal acquitted him on 7 September 2018. The court found that the forensic evidence was uncertain and the witness testimony carried limited evidentiary weight. The ruling was not unanimous: the two lay judges dissented and would have upheld the conviction.3
Teittinen expressed disappointment that even the acquittal left doubt about his innocence, saying “the truth has not come out.” He sought compensation from the state after 8 years of imprisonment.1
Significance for the wiki
Teittinen is one of three named individuals in Rättssäkerhet in Swedish criminal cases whose convictions were overturned only after external investigation, supporting the claim that Sweden’s Correction channel runs through journalism and persistent legal advocacy rather than internal institutional control.
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Esa Teittinen frias efter åtta år i fängelse, Expressen, 7 September 2018. ↩↩
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Tidigare morddömd släpps efter resning, Ekot, Sveriges Radio, 24 August 2018. ↩
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Morddömda Esa Teittinen frias av hovrätten, Dagens Nyheter, 7 September 2018. ↩
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