The struggle between compliance with the role of the prosecutor versus the principle of presumption of innocence

Abstract

Innocence constitutes a state in which every person finds himself until a conviction is pronounced against him, so that no detainee, suspect or defendant until he reaches the status of convicted by a final sentence should not be treated as guilty, a situation that Ecuador is violated daily, especially when the Prosecutor's Office makes certain public statements about the guilt of someone who has not yet been tried by a competent authority. Despite the historical paradigms that guided the activities of the Prosecutor's Office as a prosecution body, in the modern adversarial system to which the Ecuadorian criminal system of prosecuting adheres, the prosecutor is a procedural subject who must act under principles of impartiality and objectivity even when it bears the burden of proof aimed at disproving the innocence of the accused. For some, this change in the prosecutor's functions causes a conflict with the principle of presumption of innocence. However, although in practice there are still difficulties in harmonizing the prosecutor's accusatory functions with respect for innocence, it is considered that this only It requires the maturation of the Prosecutor's Office in the transition towards the adversarial system proposed in the legislation. Through a methodology based on theoretical research methods and extensive consultation of normative and doctrinal sources, the objective of analyzing the possible contradiction between the prosecutor's accusatory functions and respect for the presumption of innocence was achieved.