Watch above: not guilty verdict in Saskatoon child pornography trial
SASKATOON – A once prominent Saskatoon businessman has been found not guilty of accessing and possessing child pornography.
Leo Baribeau, 67, sat quietly in court Tuesday, as Justice Grant Currie read his detailed decision out loud.
Currie underscored the importance of establishing whether or not the former Star Produce CEO intentionally did what he was being accused of.
“Justice Currie listened to the accused’s evidence and found, based on that evidence, that there was at the very least a reasonable doubt here and he was found not guilty,” said defence attorney Aaron Fox.
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Police seized two of Baribeau’s computers in 2009 and found hundreds of illegal images on a hard drive. Many of them contained young girls between the ages of six and 12.
Baribeau was formally charged in February 2010. The retired businessman took the stand during the trial and told the court he inadvertently downloaded the images while searching for songs on the now defunct file-sharing site Limewire.
The images were found on his Dell desktop computer and Lenovo laptop.
“A lot of it came down to the court’s assessment of Mr. Baribeau’s credibility and whether his explanation was reasonable. The court found that it was and that determines the matter,” said senior Crown prosecutor Michael Segu.
“This was a very technical sort of case and it was a little different from most of the child pornography cases – just the way it unfolded, the way the investigation went, the way the evidence went,” Segu said following the delivery of the verdict.
Segu says an appeal is unlikely, but also added “Never say never.”
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