A JURY assembled by television producers has taken a fresh look at the conviction of Omar Benguit who is serving a life sentence for the murder of a foreign student in Bournemouth.

South Korean language student Jong-Ok Shin was stabbed three times while walking home in Charminster from a night out in 2002.

No-one witnessed what happened and the knife was never recovered.

Before the 26-year-old died she told police and medics in poor English her attacker wore a mask and had attacked from behind.

Benguit, now 43, was arrested on August 22, 2002, more than a month after the murder on July 12.

After three trials he was finally convicted and jailed for life in 2005 and he has since lost two attempts at the Court of Appeal to overturn his conviction.

Last night (Sunday) his case was looked at again during a new episode of The Jury Room, a CBS Reality show which re-examines murder cases where a convicted killer has always maintained their innocence.

The TV jury found Benguit 'not guilty' with a split decision of five to seven.

During the show the jury reviewed the original trial evidence and considered new evidence not heard in his other three trials.

The jurors debated the reliability of a key witness and also looked at evidence which suggest an alternative perpetrator - an idea first introduced by Benguit's lawyers in 2014.

During his trial his lawyers unsuccessfully argued another murderer, Danilo Restivo, may be responsible, that the main prosecution witness was unreliable and CCTV showed Benguit was not in the area. Restivo is behind bars for the brutal November 2002 murder of Bournemouth mother-of-two Heather Barnett, which also took place in Charminster.

The show’s producers said: "Police were unable to find any forensic evidence to link Benguit to the crime and a murder weapon has never been recovered.

"The prosecution’s case was that Benguit was assisted in the murder by other men, and that the female witness had observed incriminating actions and behaviours.

"The female witness, a prostitute with a drug habit, went on national TV and said she saw Benguit stab Jong-Ok Shin, when she had already told three juries she didn’t see the murder.

"The defence argued that the inconsistency of her post-trial statements and CCTV evidence suggest she made false claims about the events, calling into question her reliability as a witness."

Last year an academic at the University of Portsmouth and a team of eight students took up Benguit's case in a so-called innocence project at the Criminal Justice Clinic.