Basil Parasiris was acquitted on Friday by a 12-person jury at the Longueuil courthouse, on Montreal's South Shore.

He was charged with first-degree murder in the death of Const. Daniel Tessier, who died after being shot three times last spring after he entered Parasiris's Brossard home with a battering ram during a botched drug raid.

The verdict means the jury believed Parasiris's self-defence argument was enough to raise a reasonable doubt about the charges.

The father of two insisted he believed his family was being attacked by home invaders when a police team swarmed their house on March 2, 2007.