The Presumption of Innocence in Sexual Offence Cases in Spain

One of the most pressing topics in current criminal law is the assessment of evidence in offences committed in private, where the only prosecution testimony is the complainant's statement against the accused's denial.

The Supreme Court's Triple Filter

For the victim's statement to suffice to destroy the presumption of innocence, the Supreme Court requires it to pass three filters:

• Absence of subjective lack of credibility: no improper motives (revenge, spite, economic interests or divorce proceedings).
• Plausibility: the account must be logical and supported by peripheral corroborating elements (medical reports, prior or subsequent witnesses, WhatsApp messages).
• Persistence in the incrimination: the version must remain constant over time without essential contradictions.

The defence's task is to attack these three pillars to make reasonable doubt prevail (in dubio pro reo).

What Each Filter Means in Practice

The first filter looks at the relationship between complainant and accused before the events. A break-up in dispute, contested custody or divorce proceedings, debts or workplace conflicts do not automatically invalidate the testimony, but they oblige the court to examine it with particular care. The defence's work here is documentary: reconstructing that prior relationship with objective evidence rather than mere insinuations.

The second filter concerns corroboration. A logical, coherent account gains force when peripheral elements support it: a medical report close in time to the events, witnesses who saw the complainant's state before or afterwards, messages exchanged between the parties. The quality of the corroboration matters: witnesses who only know what the complainant told them add little, whereas objective and contemporaneous data add a great deal. Where the account stands entirely alone, the court must explain why it is nevertheless sufficient.

The third filter, persistence, is tested by comparison. In a criminal case the complainant usually makes several statements: to the police, before the investigating court and at trial. The defence places these versions side by side. Contradictions on essential aspects — what happened, where, how — undermine the testimony; minor variations on peripheral details, by contrast, are normal in any genuine memory and do not destroy it.

A Single Testimony Can Suffice, But Never Automatically

Spanish case law accepts that the victim's statement, on its own, can constitute sufficient prosecution evidence: otherwise, offences committed in private would go unpunished. But that possibility is not a shortcut. The three filters are precisely the safeguard that separates a conviction based on evidence from a conviction based on belief. The court must reason, in its judgment, why the testimony passes each filter, and a conviction that skips that reasoning is open to challenge on appeal.

How the Defence Is Built

• Full context of the communications: producing complete conversations between the parties, not isolated extracts, since messages before and after the events often speak louder than any witness.
• Cross-examination at trial: the hearing is where persistence is genuinely tested; preparing it requires mastering every prior statement in the case file.
• Scrutiny of the corroborating elements: checking whether the reports and witnesses cited really corroborate the account or merely repeat it.
• In dubio pro reo: reminding the court that if, after weighing all the evidence, a reasonable doubt persists, the only constitutionally admissible outcome is acquittal.

The presumption of innocence is not a procedural formality: it is the rule of judgment that governs the entire trial. In cases that come down to one word against another, making the court apply it rigorously is the essence of the defence. And that rigour benefits everyone: the accused, who can only be convicted on real evidence, and the genuine victim, whose testimony emerges stronger from a process that has tested it seriously.