A FORMER Hampshire judge will find out today whether he will be jailed after admitting downloading child porn from the Internet.

David Selwood, 69, was previously told he could be sent to prison for downloading 75 pornographic images of children.

As previously reported in the Daily Echo, Selwood, of Magdalen Hill, Winchester, admitted 13 charges relating to making and possessing indecent images of young boys.

Selwood was charged after using his credit card to pay for the images through an American website last year.

Due to him serving as a full-time judge at Portsmouth Crown Court at the time, Hampshire officers handed the investigation to colleagues in the West Midlands constabulary to ensure complete impartiality.

They then swooped on the judge's luxury home in April and recovered a laptop computer that was found to have the indecent images stored on hard disk.

When Selwood returned to answer bail several weeks later he was charged with the 13 offences to which he pleaded guilty at a hearing at Bow Street magistrates court last month.

District judge Timothy Workman warned Selwood he could face jail for the offences.

Selwood, a father-of-four, said in a statement to police that he had visited the sites to see how easy it was for someone with limited IT knowledge to access pornographic sites. However, he admitted it would be hard to justify his actions as research.

Selwood was the nominated judge in Hampshire to deal with cases involving people accessing child porn websites in the US.

Selwood will retain his pension, estimated to be worth about £500,000 over the next ten years.