The Supreme Court of Canada has overturned a Saskatchewan man's conviction for possessing child pornography. (Kerry Wall/CBC)

The Supreme Court of Canada has overturned the conviction of a Saskatchewan man charged with possessing child pornography, saying a justice of the peace had insufficient evidence to issue a search warrant in 2003.

Urbain P. Morelli maintained his charter rights were violated when police searched his computer for child pornography after a technician who had visited his home to work on the machine expressed concerns to police.

In a 4-3 decision, the high court acquitted Morelli, after ruling police relied on a "carelessly drafted" and "misleading" search warrant.

The computer technician had been installing a high-speed internet connection in Morelli's home in La Ronge in September 2002 when he noticed a webcam was plugged into a VCR and pointed toward the man's three-year-old daughter, who was playing with toys.

The technician also noticed several links to both adult and child pornography sites in the taskbar’s "favourites" list.

When the technician returned to the house the next day to complete his work, he noticed the toys had been put away, the webcam was pointed in a different direction, the computer hard drive had been reformatted and the icons removed from the desktop.

In November, the technician reported his concern to a social worker, who told the RCMP. The technician spoke to the RCMP in January and a warrant was sworn out on Jan. 10, 2003.

During the trial in Saskatchewan, Morelli's lawyer argued the case should be thrown out because there wasn't enough evidence for the search warrant.

The trial judge ruled there was enough evidence to justify the warrant, and Morelli was given an 18-month conditional sentence in 2005.

In Friday's decision, the Supreme Court noted that the technician reported seeing suspicious links but did not actually see pornographic images of children on the computer.

The court also found that the information used to obtain the warrant failed to mention the child was fully clothed and there were no signs of abuse when the technician visited the home.

"While the reviewing judge found no deliberate attempt to mislead, it is nonetheless evident that the police officer’s selective presentation of the facts painted a less objective and more villainous picture than the picture that would have emerged had he disclosed all the material information available to him at the time," said Justice Morris Fish, writing for the majority.

"It seems much more plausible that the accused was simply using the VCR and webcam to videotape his young daughter at play for posterity’s sake, rather than for any purpose connected to child pornography."

The court ruled that two suspiciously labelled links in the “Favourites” are not sufficient enough to "characterize a person as an habitual child pornography offender of the type that seeks out and hoards illegal images."

"The fact that the bulk of the pornographic material that the technician observed at the accused’s house was legal adult pornography suggests that the accused did not have a “pronounced” interest in child pornography," Fish wrote.

Justice Marie Deschamps, writing the dissenting opinion, said that while the information used to obtain the search warrant could have been more elaborate, it did supply the judge with enough credible information to issue the warrant.

Deschamps said the information used to get the warrant had references about the removal of child pornography from Morelli's computer that "cannot be characterized as false."

"Viewed in context, there is no question that what had, according to the technician, been removed from the computer were the links in the “favourites” list to child pornography."

The fact that there were several links to both adult and child pornography in the “favourites” list and that a “graphic” pornographic image was prominently displayed on the computer justified the judge reasonably inferring that Morelli had "a conspicuous interest in this type of material," Deschamps wrote.

The position of the camera, the fact it was connected to a videotape recorder, along with the presence of labelled and unlabelled videotapes, showed Morelli "was interested in reproducing images, accumulating such material, and keeping it for his future use," Deschamps wrote.

"There was a credibly based probability that the accused was in the habit of reproducing and saving images and had a propensity to pornography, and more specifically to child pornography."

With files from The Canadian Press