A state jury deliberated for barely two hours Thursday before finding defendant Jacob Le not guilty of second-degree murder.

Le, 28, was on trial for the Oct. 3, 2012, fatal stabbing of his friend, 23-year-old Brent Keolaokalani "Ola" Kanae, in an Ala Moana Center stairwell.

With no murder weapon or testimony from anyone who could place Le in or near the stairwell at the time of the murder, the state’s case was largely circumstantial.

"We didn’t have eyewitnesses but we had his confession," said Deputy Prosecutor Kristine Yoo.

Honolulu Police Department detectives testified that Le confessed to killing Kanae and even demonstrated how he did it.

Police did not record the confession because Le made it in the course of a polygraph examination. When the detectives ended the examination to have Le repeat his confession to record it, Le invoked his right to remain silent and asked for a lawyer, Yoo said.

This was Le’s second trial for Kanae’s murder. His first trial, in 2013, ended with the jurors deadlocked 11-1 in favor of conviction.

Le did not take the witness stand in the first trial, but testified in the second that police confused him and pressured him into confessing.

Defense lawyer Nelson Goo said another difference between the two trials was that in this second one, "We brought in an expert to discuss the phenomenon of false confessions, and Jacob fit the profile. And I was able to demonstrate all of the techniques police use in eliciting confessions."

Goo said Le has mental deficits but was prohibited from telling the jurors that Le was a special-education student. He said Le expressed no emotion when the courtroom manager read the not-guilty verdict, so Goo said he wasn’t sure Le knew what that meant.

"I asked him, ‘Do you understand what just happened?’ And he said, ‘Yes, thank you,’" Goo said.

Jury foreman Benjamin Fregeau said that without the confession the state’s evidence was "nothing other than speculation."

"And so with the idea of false confessions, I think it kind of swung it pretty heavily (toward not guilty)," Fregeau said.

Police said they started focusing on Le after friends of both Le and Kanae told them Le had made incriminating statements following the murder.

Fregeau said he doesn’t believe Le committed the murder.

"I don’t necessarily feel that he is guilty and that the state just couldn’t prove it," Fregeau said. "I just feel that he was a person in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Yoo said Kanae’s family members are disappointed that the jury found Le not guilty.

"They know he did it, and they’re not looking for anybody else," she said.