diff --git a/CHANGES.txt b/CHANGES.txt
index 8423e2f3cc..7b4c4ca841 100644
--- a/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/CHANGES.txt
@@ -3,6 +3,7 @@
  * more efficient allocation of small bloom filters (CASSANDRA-3618)
  * CLibrary.createHardLinkWithExec() to check for errors (CASSANDRA-3101)
  * fsync the directory after new sstable or commitlog segment are created (CASSANDRA-3250)
+ * Avoid creating empty and non cleaned writer during compaction (CASSANDRA-3616)
 Merged from 0.8:
  * prevent new nodes from thinking down nodes are up forever (CASSANDRA-3626)
 
diff --git a/src/java/org/apache/cassandra/db/compaction/CompactionTask.java b/src/java/org/apache/cassandra/db/compaction/CompactionTask.java
index fe85e89cb0..a42b9ff5b9 100644
--- a/src/java/org/apache/cassandra/db/compaction/CompactionTask.java
+++ b/src/java/org/apache/cassandra/db/compaction/CompactionTask.java
@@ -175,9 +175,12 @@ public class CompactionTask extends AbstractCompactionTask
                     SSTableReader toIndex = writer.closeAndOpenReader(getMaxDataAge(toCompact));
                     cachedKeyMap.put(toIndex, cachedKeys);
                     sstables.add(toIndex);
-                    writer = cfs.createCompactionWriter(keysPerSSTable, compactionFileLocation, toCompact);
-                    writers.add(writer);
-                    cachedKeys = new HashMap<DecoratedKey, Long>();
+                    if (nni.hasNext())
+                    {
+                        writer = cfs.createCompactionWriter(keysPerSSTable, compactionFileLocation, toCompact);
+                        writers.add(writer);
+                        cachedKeys = new HashMap<DecoratedKey, Long>();
+                    }
                 }
             }
         }