Top court quashes child porn conviction

"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."

Whew, big headline on this one, but I wanted to get as much of the story out. It is beyond me that the tech's info wasn't sufficient for a search warrant. Isn't possessing child porn illegal? I may give old Morelli the benefit of the doubt about the webcam pointed to his 3 year old, after all many parents take video of their kids. But it is a vile scenario if he is broadcasting disturbing video of his own kid. Now I'm presuming the tech, with all his experience, would know the difference between normal porn and child porn websites.

"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."

So it seems that Morelli may have concluded that the tech had seen too much. But it seems he was found guilty on the tech's statement only and no actual child porn was discovered on his computer. Can't they get a record of websites visited from his server or something...?

Did a child porn pervert/pedophile get away with it? Possible, but I'm sure the Sasketchewan police learned a valuable lesson from all this..