PROVIDENCE — The state Supreme Court, overruling a Superior Court trial judge, said Friday that a digital camera seized from the home of a man suspected of taking inappropriate pictures of a then-10-year-old girl about four years ago could be used against him at trial.

The ruling reinstates key evidence in the state’s felony video-voyeurism case against Thomas P. Byrne, of Barrington. Byrne is accused of taking “inappropriate” pictures of the “intimate area” of a young girl while she was helping with chores in his Warren coffeehouse in 2005.

The Supreme Court ruling focused on the camera police officers seized from Byrne’s home as part of their investigation. The girl had told the police Byrne photographed her inappropriately. Based on that statement, the police searched the coffeehouse and Byrne’s home. They found a digital camera with images of the girl and what they said were more than 50 pictures of “unsuspecting” adult women.

Byrne was among the first to be charged under the state’s 2004 video-voyeurism law, which made it illegal to secretly photograph or videotape people for the purposes of sexual gratification. Conviction can mean a sentence of up to three years in prison and a $5,000 fine.

Byrne contested the search warrant, saying the police had the right to search the coffeehouse, where the pictures were claimed to have been taken, but not his home. Judge Daniel A. Procaccini, who presided over the Byrne case, agreed, ruling in November 2007 that the police had not presented enough underlying facts in their affidavit to connect Byrne’s home with the actions being investigated. Procaccini disallowed the camera as evidence.

But the Supreme Court, in an unanimous opinion written by acting Chief Justice Maureen McKenna Goldberg, said Procaccini went too far.

“Common sense suggests that a camera is a small easily transportable item of personal property,” Goldberg wrote. “Short of surveillance or actual observation of defendant taking the camera home, we are hard-pressed to envision what additional facts connecting the camera to defendant’s home could be alleged to support this inference.”

The decision also noted other cases that said, given the nature of the crime, such photographs would be kept in a private location, such as one’s home.

“Here, all that was necessary was a reasonable inference that the defendant took his camera home,” the court said.

Michael J. Healey, spokesman for Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch, said Lynch’s office was pleased with the decision and hoped to proceed with the case as soon as possible.

jhill@projo.com