Mr Krzyzyk was cleared of a single charge of sexual assault last month. The court heard that the woman complained to police a month after the alleged incident only because her boyfriend was being investigated over an attack on Mr Krzyzyk.

Judge Michael Bromley-Martin ordered an inquiry into the “reprehensible” late delivery of the footage and said that Ms Bahra’s persistence may have prevented a “serious risk of injustice”.

The judge said yesterday: “This seems to me to be a rather serious omission, especially as it turned out the CCTV assisted the defence. For reasons that are not clear to me, even though that CCTV footage was produced by a prosecution witness and therefore an exhibit in the case, it was not produced to the defence despite many requests for its production. It is necessary for the Crown Prosecution Service to make sure that evidence upon which they wish to rely, particularly evidence which is capable of assisting the defence, [is served] to ensure that such a failure never occurs again.” [J4MB: The CPS will doubtless mend its ways in the light of this blistering attack.]

The judge said that it was not a repeat of the failure to reveal details of unused evidence that led to the collapse of the rape trial of Liam Allan last month. “This was not a failure of disclosure, this was a failure to serve the prosecution case.”

Ms Bahra said that she believed Mr Krzyzyk would have been convicted if she had not secured the footage.

“In most sex assault cases it is usually the complainant’s word against the defendant’s,” she said. “There will rarely be another eyewitness or independent evidence, but the independent evidence in this case completely supported his defence.

“The woman in this case was very persuasive and I don’t think the jury would have believed him [Mr Krzyzyk] without the CCTV.” [J4MB: In plain English, men in such cases will spend long stretches in prison if the women is ‘persuasive’, or the man isn’t.]

The five hours of footage, apart from five seconds obscured by a passerby, showed that Mr Krzyzyk had not lifted up the woman’s skirt and patted her bottom and that she had not been left hysterical as she had claimed. Mr Krzyzyk told the court that the woman had initially made the allegation to the club’s manager because he had caught her stealing champagne from his table.

He spent a year on bail, during which he was subject to a curfew and wore an electronic tag, before being cleared.

Senior CPS officials wrote to the judge apologising for the ten-month delay in handing over the video, saying that prosecutors had been unable to play the file given to them by police. Lawyers for the CPS and Metropolitan Police also admitted that there had been an “unnecessary or improper act or omission” in failing to ensure that witnesses attended the first day of the trial.

The judge awarded Mr Krzyzyk £4,800 in wasted costs for his defence.

Scotland Yard is urgently reviewing about 30 sex cases due to go to court after the collapse of Mr Allan’s trial and the halting of the prosecution of Isaac Itiary, who was accused of raping a child, because of the late disclosure of evidence.

Samuel Armstrong, an aide to a Tory MP, was cleared of raping a House of Commons worker last month after evidence was disclosed to his defence team less than two weeks before his trial.

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Hundreds of prisoners are now estimated to have dementia, including some who are said to be unaware that they are in prison.

Peter Clarke, the chief inspector of prisons, proposed sending older inmates to “care homes with walls” to ease the pressure on jails. David Lidington, the justice secretary, is believed to back the idea and is now considering whether it should be implemented nationally. He briefed his cabinet colleagues in November on the need to adapt to the growing problem of elderly prisoners.

A source told the Sun: “These prisoners are so old they are very unlikely to commit another offence. So you have to ask yourself, is jail the best place for them? We’re not talking about an early end to their sentence, but placing them somewhere where there is specialist help.”

Any suggestion of softness on criminals risks a backlash from the Conservative right, but the idea of freeing elderly prisoners was advocated last year by the Centre for Social Justice, the think tank founded by the former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith.

Peter Dawson, chief executive of the Prison Reform Trust, said: “People have the right to expect justice to be done. But many are living out their old age in conditions that demean both them and us. A just system tempers retribution with mercy, and we need to ask ourselves if we are getting that balance right.”

About 80 per cent of older prisoners have a chronic illness and watchdogs have repeatedly raised the alarm about their treatment in institutions designed for fit young men. Nigel Newcomen, the prisons ombudsman, said in June that older convicts were dying while shackled to warders. “There has been little strategic grip of this sharp demographic change. Prisons and their healthcare partners have been left to respond in a piecemeal fashion,” he said.

A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: “We need a prison system which is equipped to manage offenders in a secure and appropriate way. We have an ageing prison population, which creates extra pressure on prison staff who must manage their specific needs. We regularly seek advice from experts on the future of the prison estate. No decisions have been made.”

So considerable numbers of old men will be transferred to “care homes with walls”. Will the opportunity be taken to reduce overcrowding in the prison estate? Of course not. Their places will soon be taken up by younger men.

Miss Hyde sobbed and wiped away tears as the judge, Mr Justice Teare, discharged her and told her she was free to leave the court.

The original trial heard that Miss Hyde, a waitress, armed herself with a 10-inch knife and stabbed Mr Francis up to 17 times.

The Bristol court was told that after stabbing Mr Francis, Miss Hyde told Ms Banwell: “I did it for you because I don’t like the way he treats you.”

Mr Justice Fields said that in sentencing Miss Hyde he had taken into consideration that the violence had been initiated by Mr Francis.

The trial heard that Miss Hyde, who had been drinking heavily that night, had gone back to Ms Banwell’s flat in Wells on September 4, 2009, after a night out.

Ms Banwell had called 999 after Mr Francis had attacked her and then Miss Hyde before the defendant then hit him back before she went and picked up a carving knife and stabbed him in the back and chest.

The jury was played the 999 call made by Ms Banwell in which she asks for help to stop Mr Francis from attacking Miss Hyde as the defendant then stabs him.

She says in the call: “My boyfriend is smashing, beating up my friend, she’s a girl and I need the police, I need the police ASAP.”

She continued: “There was a huge row and he hits me, and he started on, basically he hit me and he hit me so she hit him and now he has started on her and now they are hitting each other. I need the police.”

Ms Banwell then goes on to say: “Don’t f****** punch me, I’m on the phone to the police, don’t punch me, do you know what I mean, I’ve just got a smack in. No Stacey, put that down.”

With screaming heard in the background, she continues: “She has got a knife, she’s got a knife, she’s got a knife. She’s stabbed him. Oh my God she has stabbed him.”

The retrial has heard about Miss Hyde’s mental health with expert witnesses for the defence and prosecution disagreeing to the extent she may have suffered from a personality disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) which can lead to a failure of impulse control. [J4MB emphases]

The Winchester court was also told that the defendant had difficulty coping with stressful situations and in 2009 had been sent for urgent assessment for problematic use of alcohol, [J4MB: Yet again alcohol use is treated as a mitigating circumstance for a woman, while it’s invariably treated as an aggravating circumstance for men], depression, self-harm and suicidal tendencies.

Can anyone seriously doubt that the only reason Stacey Hyde is walking free today is that she’s a woman, and the person she killed was a man? Surely she should be in a secure psychiatric facility? Am I missing something obvious here? Today’s edition of The Times reports she’s gone missing, and that Avon and Somerset police are searching for her. They are warning the public not to approach her as she could be in an agitated state. She’s also known as Anastasia Darlison, and was last seen in Taunton on Sunday.