A GUILT-wracked man walked free from court today after being cleared of manslaughter over a drowning in the River Ouse in York.

Ian Edward Smith stood on the riverbank while the man he had pushed floated away to his death, Leeds Crown Court heard.

But Mr Justice Maurice Kay formally acquitted Mr Smith, 49, of the manslaughter of Colin Fawcett.

He told the jury that the only evidence about what happened at the foot of Lendal Bridge on May 19, 1997 came from Smith's confession to police.

But what he said did not amount to a crime in law and the prosecution could not disprove what he said.

"No doubt you took a very dim view of the fact that the defendant, having caused him (Colin Fawcett) to end up in the river, did nothing about it, did not try to rescue him, did not try to get any help and said nothing to anybody about it, nothing for some years.

"None of that is anything to do with the charge of manslaughter."

At the start of the trial, unknown to the jury, prosecution barrister Simon Lawler QC, had tried to persuade the judge that a case could be made of involuntary manslaughter on the grounds that Mr Smith owed Mr Fawcett a duty of care because he had taken the dead man down to the river's edge knowing him to be drunk and in an excitable mood.

But the High Court judge ruled that there was no relationship between the two and therefore Mr Smith did not, by law, have to try and rescue Mr Fawcett.

Speaking to the jury today, the Judge said: "Whatever moral or ethical aspects there may have been in the defendant's conduct, that doesn't impact on the task that you were set. It is not part of the agenda."

He added that the prosecution could not disprove that the defendant had an honest belief that he was the subject of unwanted sexual contact from a man he knew to be a promiscuous homosexual.

The court heard Mr Smith's account in which he said he pushed and slapped the dead man, who fell into the Ouse. His body was later recovered from the river.

The judge added that a pathologist had said there were no signs of recent injury on the body, so that it was clear that whatever force Mr Smith had used it must have been of a modest nature.

Mr Smith, of Ratcliffe Street, Burton Stone Lane, was charged with murder when he telephoned the police just after midnight on October 4 from York railway station last year.

He told them he could not live with the memory of Mr Fawcett's face looking up at him from the river.

The charge was later amended to manslaughter, which Mr Smith denied.

Updated: 15:12 Thursday, October 04, 2001