His image appeared in the main national newspapers, even on the front page. A young man with a disheveled appearance leaves the police station in handcuffs on his way to the courthouse, led by Guardia Civil officers, with a beard of several days and a lost look. He is considered manager of the injuries, death and perhaps sexual abuse of a three-year-old girl. The shocking headlines: "Monsters do exist and they are among us", "The look of the murderer of a three-year-old girl".... 

A few hours later, the Judge of First written request and Instruction No. 7 of Arona released the detainee provisional without bail after finding that the facts could not be qualified, even indirectly, as constituting the crime of homicide or abuse in the person of the deceased minor. The headlines, now much smaller, changed: "Victim of a mistake", "Freedom without charges for the accused".... As result of the informative excess of some media: the presumption of innocence trampled, the honor of a citizen irreparably damaged, his image ruined and his dignity broken.

The Constitution recognizes the fundamental right of all citizens to the presumption of innocence, it is an integral part of the right to a fair trial and the only act that can destroy this presumption is the sentence of a Court that declares the authorship of the crime after a trial with all the legal guarantees. For the media, respect for this right means that a person should not be considered guilty until he or she has been judicially declared as such.

This well-known requirement, both from a legal and deontological point of view, is too often ignored. Moreover, in this case, not only is the authorship of a terrible crime attributed in a headline, the news is also illustrated with a large photograph of the handcuffed individual, forever associating his image with that of the event and multiplying the damage caused (in France, the dissemination of images of a detainee in handcuffs before being convicted is prohibited). To add insult to injury, the same image continues to be used to illustrate the news of his release. On this occasion it is not even possible to speak of a parallel trial, it was not necessary, the sentence had already been pronounced.

In all that has happened, we must not fail to ask ourselves about the origin of the information reproduced by the media. Sometimes, the desire to reassure public opinion and to transmit an image of efficiency in the development of police work runs the risk of being fatally hasty. The utmost prudence must be exercised in providing the necessary information in the first moments of a research, especially in such serious events. This work must be duly coordinated by the governmental and judicial authorities through institutionalized channels, thus eliminating the undesirable leaks that result in the well-known "sources close to research".

Everyone must be aware of their responsibility; the eagerness of some to make attractive headlines and front pages, the desire of others to "hang a medal on themselves", and the increasingly worrying tendency of many citizens to find culprits to be the object of a public media lynching, determines that on too many occasions the detainees begin to be sentenced without even having been brought before a court.