Appeal court upholds acquittals in Iso Omena death case

Finland’s Court of Appeal has upheld the acquittals of security workers in the death of a 35 year old woman during a restraint at the Iso Omena shopping centre in Espoo in January 2023, Yle reported.

The Western Uusimaa District Court rejected charges of causing death through negligence against the security workers in June 2024. The court said it had not been proven that the woman’s death resulted from the defendants’ actions.

The prosecution and a close relative of the woman appealed, seeking convictions primarily for causing death through negligence and alternatively for assault.

The Court of Appeal agreed that the security workers had not used excessive force or continued using force for too long.

In the case of four defendants, the court found no evidence that they had failed to monitor the woman’s physical condition. It found that two other defendants had failed to monitor her condition during the use of force.

However, it could not be proven that the woman’s death could have been prevented if those two defendants had checked her condition a few minutes earlier. The death was also not a foreseeable consequence of the security workers’ conduct. The court therefore found no evidence of negligence by those defendants.

The Court of Appeal consequently left unchanged the district court’s decision to dismiss the charges of causing death through negligence against all the defendants. It also dismissed all the alternative assault charges, finding that it had not been proven that the defendants caused pain exceeding that resulting from necessary and justified use of force.