A MAN who was found guilty of having child pornography on his computer, has been cleared on appeal by the country’s top judge.

John Leonard, 66, of Creek Road, Canvey, was given a suspended sentence at Snaresbrook Crown Court, in London, after being found guilty by a majority verdict of possessing three indecent images of children.

His convictions, in May last year, have been overturned by the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, who declared them unsafe because the trial judge misdirected the jury.

The court heard police raided Mr Leonard’s home at 6.30am on October 30, 2009, and seized a computer in his living room.

After an interrogation of the computer by a forensic expert, four indecent images of children were retrieved.

Lord Judge told the court three of the images were in temporary internet files and the other was found in a file that is used during a system restore.

Lord Judge said the location of the images suggested they had been deleted and could only have been recovered by someone with specialist computer skills or specialist software Mr Leonard did not have.

The court heard Mr Leonard was a retired, married man of good character.

Mr Leonard’s lawyers argued his convictions were “unsafe” and claimed the trial judge’s directions wrongly led the jury to believe they had to find him guilty, simply because the images had been discovered on his computer.

Allowing the appeal and quashing the convictions, Lord Judge said the directions given did not address the question of whether Mr Leonard was capable of retrieving the images, which was the central issue in the case.

Lord Judge, sitting with Mr Justice Field and Mr Justice Maddison, added: “The flaws in the summing-up seem to us to lead to the conclusion that the convictions are unsafe.”