A GWENT special constable given a suspended jail term after a jury convicted him of assaulting a prisoner had his conviction quashed by top judges.

Darren William Venn, 32, of Cedarwood Drive, Newport, was found guilty on a majority verdict at Cardiff Crown Court in August last year of causing Rhys Barnes grievous bodily harm.

Mr Barnes' elbow was broken while he was in an approved hold at Newport Police Station.

Mr Venn and a colleague, who was acquitted, said they were acting in self-defence after Barnes became violent.

Custody officer, Mr Venn, was handed a nine-month sentence, suspended for two years, and ordered to do 150 hours of unpaid community work.

At London's Court of Appeal yesterday, Lord Justice Laws, sitting with Judge Nicholas Lorraine Smith and Mr Justice Keith, quashed the conviction as "unsafe".

He said the trial judge should have accepted the defence submission of "no case to answer" after the prosecution had called all its evidence.

Lord Justice Laws added that, although the jury had decided there was enough evidence to convict, they had proceeded on a basis which was not open to them.

The judge said that, after the Crown accepted that Mr Venn and a colleague were entitled to use "reasonable force" in initially subduing 18-year-old Rhys Barnes, they had to show the officers had gone over the top and recklessly inflicted the injury.

And he added that there was no evidence to suggest that, once Mr Barnes was in the hold, they had unnecessarily increased the pressure on his arm.