A homeless man has been cleared of trying to burgle a house where the owner found him in his enclosed back garden.
Matthew Stamp claimed he got lost after drinking and taking legal highs and had gone into the wrong house while looking for a mystery woman who he met on Exeter's Cathedral Green.
Stamp was found not guilty of burglary by a jury at Exeter Crown Court after insisting he never had any intention to steal anything and had no idea how he ended up in someone else's garden.
He said he must have climbed over an eight foot back wall while looking for a woman who had told him she was staying at a house in the Magdalen Road area.
He said he had no memory of being inside the house even though the owner and a friend heard footsteps upstairs and saw a figure moving around in the kitchen.
The jury took less than an hour to clear Stamp despite being told he had two previous convictions for almost identical burglaries at other houses in Exeter.
Stamp, aged 29, of Smythen Street, Exeter, denied burglary with intent to steal at the house in April this year and was found not guilty.
He would have faced a minimum sentence of three years if he had been found guilty because of his previous convictions.
During a one day trial householder Vernon Lester told the court he called the police after a friend who was watching television with him in the evening heard footsteps upstairs and spotted a stranger in the kitchen.
She fetched Mr Lester who found Stamp in his back garden, claiming to be lost and looking for another house. Nothing was taken and no forensic evidence found at the house.
Stamp said he had been drinking and taking legal highs on Cathedral Green when his group were joined by a woman who befriended him and invited him to visit her at her home in Magdalen Road.
He said:"I had been drinking and been to a shop in the city centre to buy legal highs. I was with a group of people I had never met before and one was a woman who said she was staying in Magdalen Road.
"My memory is a bit hazy but I ended up in Mr Lester's address. I had never been there before. I remember walking towards the shops but honestly can't remember what happened from there.
"I just remember being in the back garden. I suppose I must have got over the wall at the back. I did not have any intention of stealing anything."
