1882 QPR

JOEY Barton won't face prosecution over his Twitter comments about John Terry ahead of his trial, the Attorney General has confirmed.

The QPR midfielder let rip at the Chelsea captain, who has been accused of racially abusing Anton Ferdinand, on the social networking site.

But Attorney General Dominic Grieve has defended his decision not to prosecute Barton over the remarks.

He told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: "As far as I could see, in this particular case, whatever Mr Barton had been doing didn't seem to me, on the facts, to amount to creating the risk we have just been talking about.

"I think it is a matter of common sense. If people put out into the public domain by publishing or by broadcasting material that might influence or prejudice the course of a trial by putting background material out that is prejudicial and irrelevant to the trial process, then that has the capacity to create the risk.

"Mere invective or unpleasantness doesn't necessarily meet that test, though in some circumstances it could."