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Former Rotorua district councillor Chris Campbell has had his convictions for possessing child pornography quashed on appeal.
His convictions have been overturned on a technicality after the High Court ruled a search of his house by police was not legal.
The appeal decision, obtained by the Daily Post yesterday, said a warrant should never have been sought by police.
Justice Raynor Asher said although upholding the appeal meant Mr Campbell would go unpunished for possessing objectionable material, that outweighed the need to protect a basic privacy right from what was at the time an "entirely unlawful and unjustified intrusion".
Mr Campbell was convicted and fined $3390 in August last year on three charges following a four-part defended hearing in the Rotorua District Court.
The 37-year-old former radio announcer was found guilty of three counts of having 73 images of child pornography stored on a hard drive on his personal computer, having three printed images of child pornography and three images of child pornography on a floppy disk.
Mr Campbell told the Daily Post last year he had spent more than $100,000 defending the allegations. It is not known if he would be taking further action with the police to recoup his costs.
His lawyer, David Jones QC, would not comment and said Mr Campbell was overseas for two weeks. The validity of the search warrant was challenged at a preliminary hearing in February 2005 and for a second time in March this year, when the hearing was adjourned part-heard.
The application for the search warrant was filed in June 2003 accompanied by an affidavit from Detective Sergeant Garry Hawkins, who led the investigation.
The affidavit said police believed Mr Campbell's computer and related documents contained objectionable images of young adults.
It said Mr Campbell was a high profile DJ and that in his role as an announcer at a local radio station he attended schools and was involved in children's sporting activities.
The affidavit went on to outline why the police believed they would find objectionable material but did not give appropriate details.
Justice Asher said he agreed with Mr Jones' submission that the affidavit contained "hearsay".
Justice Asher said in his decision the affidavit was not well prepared and it did not meet the required standard for the issue of a warrant.
However, he agreed with Rotorua District Court Judge Chris McGuire's earlier view that Mr Hawkins did not act in bad faith.
- DAILY POST
