A man who served more than a year behind bars after being convicted of oral rape in a hotel walked free yesterday after three top judges quashed the verdict.

Sidney Winson, 21, of Ripon Way, Borehamwood, was sentenced to five years in prison when he was convicted of rape at St Albans Crown Court in December 2007.

But a second man, Christopher Kitchenside, was acquitted of an identical charge, relating to the same incident in a Watford hotel room in summer 2006.

At the Court of Appeal in London, Lord Justice Rix, Mr Justice Bean and Judge David Paget QC quashed Mr Winson’s conviction on the grounds that it was “inconsistent” with the verdict on Mr Kitchenside.

The teenage complainant in the case alleged that first Mr Winson and then Mr Kitchenside forced her to perform oral sex on them at the Watford hotel.

Lawyers for Mr Winson successfully argued there was no “legitimate chain of reasoning” for the jury coming to those different verdicts.