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A mum has been cleared of taking drugs into a prison – after saying the amphetamines must have been in the pocket when she bought her jeans from a charity shop .

Jurors took less than an hour to acquit Tracey Latham after she denied knowing anything about the small packet of white powder in the trousers.

Cardiff Crown Court heard the 52-year-old bought the distressed jeans from a charity shop – then washed and dried a load of denim before wearing them on a prison visit the next day.

Well-dressed mother-of-two Latham told the court how the jeans were bought from a charity shop for the Ty Hafan children’s hospice in her home town of Barry in the Vale of Glamorgan .

She said: “It’s what I wear all the time – I buy them from a Ty Hafan charity shop near where I live.”

Latham originally told officers she had bought the jeans the day before visiting the prison – but told the court she said that while panicking and in shock.

“I don’t know how long I have owned them, I’ve got so many pairs of them,” she said.

“I washed loads of pairs the night before and picked them up to put on the next morning.

“I’ve got so many pairs, I don’t know which one is which.”

Latham was alleged to have been found with a plastic bag with a small amount of amphetamine in her jeans pocket while visiting her son in prison.

Latham said she had been visiting her son Che, 22, every week for 15 months and was always searched before entering.

Prosecutor Julian Greenwood said: “An officer found and extracted an item from the right-hand front pocket of Miss Latham’s jeans.

“That turned out to be Class B amphetamine.”

Mr Greenwood added there was no suggestion the defendant was transferring the drugs to her son.

Witness Lisa Howe, the prison guard who searched Latham, said: “In the top pocket there was a little white packet of powder.

“When I put my finger in the pocket it flipped out.

“She said to me: ‘I have only just bought these trousers, they came from a charity shop yesterday.’ She said that she didn’t know what it was.”

She was attending the visitor centre of HMP Prison Parc in Bridgend with her son Dane, 18, to visit her other son Che.

Latham, of York Place, Barry , denied conveying a listed item into a prison.

She was cleared after just 40 minutes of the single count, which she had denied.