A 22-year-old man walked free from court yesterday after a magistrate ruled that a knife he carried in public was not a bladed article.

The family of Clifton George Powell Ross hugged one another as Senior Magistrate Archibald Warner made his ruling and declared: "In the circumstances I dismiss this information and find the defendant not guilty."

Mr. Ross, of Middle Town Drive, Hamilton Parish, was trying to sneak a bottle of alcohol into Ozone Nightclub on January 29 when he was stopped and searched by Police. Officers found a folded pocket knife, which Mr. Ross, a line maintenance technician for CableVision, said he used for work.

He pleaded not guilty to carrying a bladed knife in a public place at Magistrates' Court earlier this week.

His lawyer Elizabeth Christopher said there was no case to be answered because the knife was only two-and-a-half-inches long and folded closed so did not fall under new bladed article legislation, brought in under the Criminal Code last July.

The Code defines such articles as having a blade three inches long and imposes a stiff minimum mandatory prison term of three years for possession of such.

Crown counsel Oonagh Vaucrosson argued that under common law the knife was a part of the legislation because it had a mechanism that allowed the blade to remain open.

She referred to case law in the UK, where the legislation is identical but the penalties far less severe. The maximum sentence that magistrates can give there is six months imprisonment.

Mr. Warner said yesterday that he had to interpret the law in light of the "draconian" legislation brought in in Bermuda last year. While Mr. Ross's knife might have been considered a bladed article under UK law, he said, he had to consider the fact that the punishment here was so much more severe.

The purpose of Bermuda's new legislation, said Mr. Warner, was to deter the carrying of fixed-blade knives.

He found that Mr. Ross's knife fell within the exception of the law and therefore he should not be penalised.

Mr. Ross's boss Michael Jones had previously told the court that his employee was a dedicated, reliable and hardworking young man.