Erection keeps burglar out of jail

A German burglar has escaped a prison sentence - because he suffers from a permanent erection.

Maurice Baumann, 32, was sentenced to a year's jail for burgling homes in the British army garrison town of Bielefeld.

But he escaped prison after entering hospital as an "emergency case" for his unrelenting priapism.

After a week's treatment, doctors admitted they were only able to get his manhood down to "half-mast".

Baumann told a court in Bielefeld: "I woke up one morning with a hard-on. I didn't think anything of it - that happens to men a lot. But mine never went down."