A Superior Court judge was justified in finding that a Connecticut man violated a special condition of his probation by possessing pornography, the state Appeals Court ruled Friday.

The appellate court's ruling came in the Worcester Superior Court case of Michael L. Hamilton of Thompson, Conn., who pleaded guilty in November 2012 to two counts of possessing child pornography and one charge of failure to register as a sex offender. Judge James R. Lemire, since named to the Appeals Court, sentenced Mr. Hamilton to a total of 3½ years in the House of Correction and gave him credit for 617 days he had already spent in confinement.

The judge also placed Mr. Hamilton on probation for 5 years, to begin upon his release from custody. One of the special conditions of probation imposed was that Mr. Hamilton not possess pornography.

After an evidentiary hearing in May 2015, Mr. Hamilton was found to have violated the terms of his probation by possessing pornography and twice failing to report to his probation officer and was sentenced by Judge Daniel M. Wrenn to a prison term of 5 years to 5 years and a day.

Mr. Hamilton filed a motion for a new trial based on the order revoking his probation, and that motion was denied by Judge Daniel M. Wrenn in June 2018, according to court records.

Mr. Hamilton appealed from the denial of the motion, arguing that the term "pornography" is vague as applied to his conduct and that the judge's finding that he failed to report to probation was based on unreliable hearsay.

In a 14-page ruling issued Friday, the Appeals Court affirmed the denial of Mr. Hamilton's motion for a new trial, concluding that he had "fair warning that at least one of the categories of materials he possessed — explicit stories describing the rapes of young children — constituted pornography in violation of the special condition."

The appellate court described the materials in question as "letters, photographs, and stories that the defendant sent to various inmates at the house of correction from which he had been recently released." While some portions of the letters were 'nonsexual in nature," other parts described, with varying degrees of detail, "sexual acts involving the defendant, the letters' intended recipients, and other adults," the court wrote.

The photographs, which accompanied some of the letters, were of adults, either fully clothed or in their underwear, and of the defendant, unclothed, but with his hand covering his genitals, according to the ruling.

With two of the letters, Mr. Hamilton included what he characterized in his appeal as "fantasy stories." The Appeals Court said it saw no need to discuss the contents of the four stories in detail.

"Suffice it to say, they graphically describe the rapes, including gang rapes and incestuous rapes, of children as young as eighteen months old." the court said in its ruling.

While Judge Wrenn found that both the writings and photographs possessed by Mr. Hamilton constituted pornography, the Appeals Court said it did not agree that the photos were pornographic.

"We reach a much different conclusion with regard to the stories, which we think are within the scope of what any person would consider to be pornographic," the court wrote.

While the Appeals Court agreed with Mr. Hamilton that he did not have fair warning that some of the other materials he possessed were pornographic and that Judge Wrenn's finding of failure to report rested on unreliable hearsay, it said it did not need to remand the case to Worcester Superior Court "because the judge made clear that in determining the disposition he considered only the fact that the defendant committed a probation violation, along with the underlying crime for which he was on probation."