The jury in the third Damilola Taylor trial has retired to decide whether two brothers killed the ten-year-old with a broken beer bottle.

Danny, 18, and Ricky Preddie, 19, deny manslaughter of the schoolboy who bled to death on the stairwell of a housing estate in Peckham, south London.

Prosecutors alleged one of the Preddies thrust the broken glass into Damilola's leg as he walked home from an after-school computer club in November 2000.

But the defence called Alistair Wilson, clinical director at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, to say the fatal gash could have been the result of an accident.

An hour after the jury retired, they asked to see the cut in Damilola's trousers and a defence reproduction of the broken glass that caused it.

The brothers, of Peckham, were cleared of murder and assault in April. But a retrial for manslaughter was ordered after the jury failed to reach a verdict on the lesser charge.

Laboratory staff first failed to spot a bloodstain matching Damilola's DNA on the heel of Danny Preddie's trainer, prosecutors said.

The clues only came to light in a second investigation after four teenagers - not the Preddies - were acquitted in 2002 of murdering Damilola.

The ten-year-old's blood was also found on a T-shirt in Ricky Preddie's bedroom cupboard, prosecutor Victor Temple QC added.

The forensic evidence amounted to a "compelling case" against the brothers, he said.

However, the defence said the stained trainer was too small for Danny Preddie to wear at the time.

In another testimony, a 21-year-old witness who cannot be named claimed Ricky Preddie had confessed to the killing.

The witness said Preddie, intoxicated with cannabis, told him after Damilola's death: "Yeah man, I did it."

Both Dr Wilson and the unnamed witness had also given evidence at the previous trail of Danny and Ricky Preddie, who were only 12 and 13 at the time of the killing, The jury has been sent home last night.