At the height of her long public breakdown, Britney Spears’s life was unanimously agreed to be a car crash, but yesterday a jury was unable to decide whether the pop singer was guilty of driving without a licence when she had a real life prang.

The jury at Los Angeles Superior Court spent eight hours deliberating over whether the 26-year-old had a valid licence when she hit a parked car in August 2007 and left the scene without notifying the owner. The foreman then told the court that they were deadlocked and Judge James Steele declared a mistrial.

For Spears, who had no Californian licence but was carrying one from her home town of Lousiana at the time of the crash, the mistrial was another boost for her carefully-planned comeback, but Deputy City Attorney Michael Amerian was less impressed. After grudgingly agreeing to drop the case, he told US reporters, "It just goes to show, I think, how difficult it is to convict any celebrity of a crime here in Los Angeles."

Spears, who was in and out of court for custody hearings and driving charges during her drawn-out meltdown, did not attend the trial.

After being helped back to health by her father, since she was rushed to hospital for psychiatric care in January, the singer has scooped two MTV Music Video Awards gongs and is back at the top of the US charts with the single Womanizer.

She is expected to tour early next year.

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