A judge said last night he regretted that the case against a man who killed himself in prison this week was not dealt with sooner.

Judge Michael Hopmeier, who was due to sentence John Hughes for burglary yesterday, said he did not know whether Hughes would have killed himself if the case had gone ahead at a previous hearing.

He said: "It's obviously regrettable that the matter wasn't dealt with on the last occasion, as it could have been.

One simply can't say what may or may not have happened."

Hughes, 31, from Coleridge Close, in Cowley, was found hanged at Bullingdon Prison, near Bicester, on Tuesday.

Hughes's friend Christopher Joyce, 34, of Golf Course Lane, Leicester, was yesterday jailed for nine months after he admitted taking part in a distraction burglary in July 2005.

Oxford Crown Court heard how Hughes and Joyce had gone to the house of 85-year-old Evelyn Wheeldon, in Peppercorn Avenue, Oxford, pretending to be her gardeners. Simon Ash, prosecuting, said the pair had taken about £1,000 from the house.

Sentencing Joyce, Mr Hopmeier said: "You and your friend at the time deliberately targeted an elderly, frail woman who was not well, and took the opportunity to burgle her bedroom. This was, as you appreciate, what can be described as a particularly mean and wicked crime."