A Maui circuit judge acquitted Alexandria Duval of murder in the 2016 death of her 37-year-old identical twin after the pair plunged off a cliff along Hana Highway.

Duval, whose lawyer in his opening statement called the crash a tragic accident, did not testify during the trial and left the courtroom Thursday without commenting.

Judge Peter Cahill found Duval, who waived her right to a jury trial, not guilty of second-degree murder shortly after a four-day trial concluded.

“I’m disappointed with the judge,” Maui Prosecuting Attorney John Kim said. “His finding was that the fighting between the two sisters was the causation.”

Kim said the twins were fighting on and off for at least an hour, hair-pulling, in a Ford Explorer while driving along the narrow highway.

At the last point before the final plunge, a witness testified the vehicle was stopped while the women were engaged in hair-pulling, then the driver put the SUV in gear, said Kim, who attributed that to his deputies who tried the case.

“Next thing you know, the car went over the cliff,” Kim said. “At the very least it was reckless conduct.”

The Maui police traffic investigator testified the steering wheel had been turned 280 degrees and that the tire marks showed the driver accelerated instead of braked, Kim said, adding that was confirmed by the vehicle’s crash data analysis.

Duval’s expert witness testified the wheel could have kinked from hitting a berm, Kim said.

Anastasia Duval was killed when the vehicle landed on the rocky shoreline. Alexandria Duval appeared in court on the murder charge the day after the May 29 crash with her arm in a sling.

The twins had been fighting and drinking earlier on the day of the crash, Anastasia Duval’s boyfriend told the Maui News in 2016, adding that their relationship involved distrust and constant fighting but also love.

Maui District Court Judge Blaine Kobayashi dropped the murder charge in June 2016 and ordered Duval released after finding no probable cause. Months later a grand jury indicted Duval, and she was arrested in upstate New York.

The case garnered national publicity since the pair already had received notoriety in Florida where the media called them “the terrible twins of yoga” for abandoning a couple of popular upscale yoga studios in Palm Beach after financial and legal problems. A reality TV project failed. They briefly ran a studio in Utah before filing for bankruptcy.

The two moved from Utah in December 2015 to Maui, where they were charged with disorderly conduct and terroristic threatening.

The sisters Alexandria and Anastasia Duval were born Alison and Ann Dadow, respectively, in Utica, N.Y.

Kim said the publicity of the case was not a distraction to his department, “but I don’t know if it was a distraction to the court.”

He offered his sympathies to the Duvals’ father “for the loss of his child.”

Duval’s attorney, Birney Bervar, did not return calls to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.