A MAN jailed for four years after killing his best friend in a boating accident is to be released early, after the Court of Appeal reduced his sentence.

It was a plea from the dead man's mother which persuaded judges to cut the sentence.

Sean Robinson, 36, of St Peter's Basin, Newcastle, had pleaded guilty last June, at Newcastle Crown Court, to the manslaughter of Mark Smith and was sentenced to four years.

Mr Smith drowned in the River Tyne when a dinghy owned and driven by Robinson collided with a sea cadets' vessel.

Yesterday, three judges at London's Court of Appeal reduced his sentence to 18 months. Robinson could be released from Durham Prison on parole in about a month.

The court heard a written statement from Mr Smith's mother, Sheila, who begged them to set her son's killer free.

She told the court her suffering had been increased since the oil worker's imprisonment. "With regard to punishment, I don't want Sean sent to prison," she said.

"All it does is deprive him of his family. All that will happen is that more people will be hurt and certainly Mark wouldn't want that to happen to Sean."

Robinson's rigid-hulled inflatable dinghy was travelling at about 28mph - four times the river speed limit - when it collided with the cadets' boat in August 2001.

The father-of-one, who had drunk a bottle of wine and a pint of lager, was travelling on the wrong side of the river.

After the dinghy hit the cadet's boat, it crashed into the river bank. Mr Smith was thrown into the river and his body was not found for another nine days.