The Supreme Court of Canada has reinstated the conviction of Oswald Villaroman for possession of child pornography saying that the trial judge did not make a mistake in how to apply the law.

Villaroman took his laptop to a MyMacDealer shop in Calgary for repairs in December 2009 and the repair technician found child pornography files stored on the computer that were downloaded from a file-sharing program.

The technician contacted police and the computer was seized.

The laptop was tested by a forensic analyst who testified that there was only one user account associated with the computer, named “oswaldvillaroman”, and that the hard drive contained 36 child pornography files.

Villaroman admitted that the computer was his and that the files in question constituted child pornography under the Criminal Code.

He was convicted of child pornography possession after a prosecution based on circumstantial evidence provided by the technician and forensic analyst.

The trial judge concluded that the evidence satisfied him beyond a reasonable doubt that Villaroman committed the offence and that he “knew the nature of the material, had the intention to possess it, and had the necessary control over it.”

The Alberta Court of Appeal overturned the conviction last year and ruled that the trial judge “misstated the current law” and made a mistake by excluding other explanations for how the pornography ended up on Villaroman’s computer.

Villaroman’s lawyers argued that the trial judge simply erred in finding the defendant guilty beyond reasonable doubt when the prosecution had brought virtually no evidence of possession.

The Crown said that requiring prosecutors to disprove all other possible conclusions concerning the presence of pornography would increase the burden of proof to an impossible degree and said that could have a devastating impact on the ability to prosecute child pornography cases and others that rely on circumstantial evidence.

On Friday, the Supreme Court of Canada disagreed with the appeal judgment and ruled that the trial judge did not make a mistake in how to apply the law.

(With files from The Canadian Press)

Click HERE to read the Supreme Court Judgement or scroll the document below.