Two young men have been found not guilty of the murder of 56-year-old Canberra man Peter Keeley.
Mr Keeley's body was found in bushland at Broulee, on the New South Wales South Coast, on February 2, 2020.
Three 17-year-old boys were charged with his murder at the time.
Two of them, now aged 19 and 20, faced a six-day judge-alone trial in the NSW Supreme Court in May after pleading not guilty to murder but guilty to aggravated kidnapping.
On Thursday, Justice Michael Walton found them not guilty of murder, but convicted them for detaining Mr Keeley with the intention of occasioning actual bodily harm.
There was an audible sigh of relief from family members of the accused in court, who hugged each other as the verdict was handed down.
Outside court, defence solicitor Wayne Boom said "it's over", while defence senior counsel Carolyn Davenport said it was a "great relief".
During the trial the court heard one of the accused spoke to Mr Keeley on the Grindr dating app before he was found dead, and that another thought he was a paedophile.
One of the boys had googled "does holding a metal object in your hand make a difference to your punch?" hours before meeting up with Mr Keeley.
There was disagreement between the two forensic pathologists who took the stand, including over whether Mr Keeley's airways were obstructed before his death and what his cause of death was.
In his evidence for the prosecution, Bernard I'Ons told the court Mr Keeley likely suffered cardiac arrest caused by a craniofacial trauma with airway obstruction after the teenagers assaulted him.
But defence witness Johan Duflou argued that methamphetamine in Mr Keeley's system could have contributed significantly to his death.
The court heard one of the boys rolled Mr Keeley on his side after the assault "so he wouldn't choke on his tongue".
Judge says initial autopsy flawed
Justice Walton told the court while he accepted that Mr Keeley had at some point during the assault been on the ground face first, and that there was a gag made of packing tape on his face, he could not conclude that his cause of death was suffocation.
Justice Walton said the initial autopsy of Mr Keeley's body was flawed because it was conducted on the "flawed premise" that the gag, made of packing tape, was covering Mr Keeley's mouth and nose.
But the court found the placement of the packing tape meant it was plausible that Mr Keeley could still have breathed through his mouth.
Justice Walton agreed with Johan Duflou that methamphetamine toxicity could not be ruled out as a cause of death.
He said the Crown had not proven beyond reasonable doubt that the cause of death was craniofacial trauma combined with airway obstruction.
