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The judgment against the former national soccer player Christoph Metzelder is final.
The public prosecutor's office withdrew its appeal and both sides had waived their right to appeal, the Düsseldorf district court announced on Monday.
The 40-year-old also refrained from returning his cell phone, which had been seized as evidence.
The Düsseldorf District Court sentenced former national soccer player Christoph Metzelder to a ten-month suspended prison sentence on Thursday. According to the verdict, the court saw it as proven that Metzelder had passed on child and youth pornographic files in 26 cases. In one case, he was fined for possession of 18 files. The 40-year-old confessed to owning and forwarding the files. Metzelder's lawyer Ulrich Sommer initially left open on Thursday whether his client would accept the judgment.
After the verdict, the Düsseldorf public prosecutor appealed on Friday.
Specifically, it was not about the sentence, but about the subsequent confiscation of Metzelder's cell phones.
A spokeswoman for the public prosecutor of the German Press Agency said on Friday that an appeal was lodged against the judgment, in particular for formal legal reasons, since no decision had been made about the confiscation of the cell phone with the incriminated files.
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According to a report by "Focus Online", the public prosecutor's office wanted to confiscate the 40-year-old's mobile phone, on which the investigators had found 297 child and youth pornographic files, as a means of crime.
Should the dispute over the cell phone, for example, be settled out of court, an appeal would be invalid, according to judicial circles on Friday.
The allegations against Metzelder became known in September 2019.
Police investigators had seized his cell phone during a course at the Hennef sports school.
At the beginning of the process, Metzelder announced that he would return all public awards such as the Federal Cross of Merit and the North Rhine-Westphalia Order of Merit. Because of the partial confession, the process was ended with a verdict on the first day. Originally, three days of negotiations were planned.