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David Tamihere will not face a retrial over the 1989 deaths of Swedish backpackers Heidi Paakkonen and Sven Höglin.
Tamihere had his convictions quashed in March, 36 years after he was found guilty of the Coromandel murders.
In the High Court at Auckland on Wednesday morning, Crown prosecutor Claire Patterson said there was no longer sufficient evidence to proceed with a further prosecution.
Justice Simon Mount discharged Tamihere, saying he was free to go.
Tamihere quickly left the court.
In a decision released on March 31, the Supreme Court directed a retrial but said it was up to the Crown to decide whether one should be held.
The court found there was a fundamental error in Tamihere's 1990 trial which made it unfair - and the Crown case had changed so "radically" since then that it had not actually been tested by a jury.
Tamihere was convicted of the murder of Höglin, 23, and Paakkonen, 21, in 1990.
The couple was last seen in Thames in April 1989 and Höglin's body was found in 1991, some 70km from where the prosecution first theorised he had been killed.
In 2017, a key witness in the Crown’s case, prison informant Robert Conchie Harris, was found guilty of perjury.
Tamihere took the case to the Court of Appeal which in 2024 found there had been a miscarriage of justice because of Harris's evidence, but it did not quash its conviction because the court remained convinced beyond reasonable doubt that Tamihere was guilty.
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court found the Court of Appeal did not have the right to make a call on Tamihere's guilt after it had found the miscarriage of justice - that could only be made by a jury.
