A Channings Wood inmate has been cleared of having two mobile phones after telling a jury that another prisoner dropped them during a disturbance.
Alex Shirley was found not guilty at Exeter Crown Court after describing how he had begged prison staff to have the phones fingerprinted and tested for DNA.
They were not fingerprinted but one was checked for DNA and the test showed evidence of contact with five other inmates, but not Shirley.
A video clip was also found on one SIM card which showed a group of prisoners filming themselves. Shirley was not visible in any of the footage.
Shirley, from Liverpool, is serving a five-year, five-month sentence for the brutal robbery of a cannabis grower who was living in a hut in a garden in Newquay, Cornwall.
He and another man burst into the building while the victim was sleeping and threatened to break his legs with a hammer and screwdriver.
The two robbers received 18-month suspended sentences when the case was heard at Truro Crown Court but the attorney general appealed the case to the Court of Appeal on the grounds it was too lenient.
Shirley went on the run after sentence was increased to its current length and police issued an appeal to find him.
At the time he was believed to be living in Newquay or Liverpool and using the nickname Scouse Jay. He was arrested in 2015 and has been serving his sentence ever since.
He was in Channings Wood on May 1, 2017 when there was a major disturbance with prisoners fighting each other and confronting staff in an open area between two living blocks.
Shirley, aged 30, denied two counts of possessing contraband items inside a prison and was found not guilty within an hour.
The prosecuting alleged he had the two miniature phones in his hand or hidden under his jumper when he was restrained during the disturbance.
One of the officers who held him on the ground said saw the two items fall from his clothing and put them in evidence bags immediately.
The phones were small enough to be hidden inside a prisoner’s body and one of the reasons they were not examined more thoroughly forensically was because they were thought to pose a bio-hazard.
Shirley said he had not been part of the disturbance but had run away from prison officers because he had two small wraps of contraband tobacco in his hand.
He said he knew nothing about the phones, which must have been dumped by another inmate during the fracas at exactly the place where he was restrained and dragged to the ground.
He said: ‘I did not have the phones at any stage. I did not even know they were in the prison. I am still a serving prisoner and if I said who they belonged to I would be a dead man.
‘I was not looking after them for anybody. I had never used them and never seen them. I did not have them in my hand or in my clothing.
‘I asked the police to fingerprint them and take DNA off them because I knew it would prove my innocence.’ Shirley was taken back to jail to complete his sentence despite his acquittal on these charges.