official, who is not an abstract entity but a person whose rights must be equally protected. While there could be many hypotheses, what happens if the opinion of a journalist insinuates that the actions of a public official on firing an employee in a public hospital, were motivated by racial and gender prejudice? The mere distribution of information, which may well be an opinion on a matter of public interest, is enough to cause irreparable damage to the public official’s personal and professional life. 14. Therefore, my particular position is that, in cases where the expressions cause serious harm to the individual, criminal sanction may be justified when the rest of the requirements established by Article 13 of the Convention itself and developed by the Court in its case law are met. In this way, the Palacio Urrutia judgment follows a logic that seeks to resolve, in a dogmatic manner and establishing a strict rule, an issue that requires a casuistic evaluation based on the various factors that have been identified by the Court in its case law, some of which have been reiterated in this particular opinion. From that perspective, I consider that the precedent of the case of Álvarez Ramos should not be understood in the sense that there has been a modification of the content and logic of Article 13(2) of the American Convention, since this would mean a setback with respect to the possibilities of the Court to adequately address cases involving subsequent liability in matters of public interest. 15. However, despite the fact that it seems to me that the way in which the case has been resolved has been wrong, I consider that the final result is adequate. In the first place, the crime of “serious slanderous insults against authority” constituted a norm that was contrary to Article 13 of the Convention, inasmuch as it granted special protection to the authorities, when in reality the authorities are more exposed to scrutiny and therefore the threshold of protection of the norm should be lower in matters of public interest. Secondly, there is a lack of justification regarding the need for the criminal sanction, considering that the then President Correa enjoyed ample space to contradict what Mr. Palacio Urrutia pointed out, (which he, in fact, used frequently) and also the victims offered to rectify the article, which was rejected by the offended party (par. 61). Third, there was an evident lack of proportionality between the damage and the imposed sanction of 3 years in prison and the payment of more than USD $40,000,000, which also had a chilling effect on other journalists who worked at El Universo. 16. From the foregoing it follows that, although I disagree with the tendency to establish an absolute rule regarding the impossibility of establishing criminal sanctions in cases such as this one, I do agree with the declaration of international responsibility for violations of freedom of expression to the detriment of the victims in the case. This is the reason why I voted in favor of the Second Operative Point, although I warn, I insist, that the tendency to decriminalize the crimes of libel and slander in this case and the case of Álvarez Ramos, weakens the guarantee of other human rights that may be affected by the abuse of freedom of expression. At this point it is pertinent to remember that human rights are interdependent and indivisible, and the protection of some cannot be at the expense of the protection of the rest. The criteria of the Court must be adequate to cover the complexity of the legal world, especially when it is considered that domestic judges must follow the criteria of the Court. II. case Regarding the inappropriate grouping of the rights declared as violated in the 17. In this point, it is pertinent to highlight the inadequacy of the majority's criterion for grouping the conclusions of all rights analyzed in the judgment, with respect to Mr. Palacio Urrutia, in a single operative paragraph (Second Operative Paragraph). 5 This situation once The State is responsible for the violation of the rights to freedom of expression and the principle of legality, the right to movement and residence and the right to work, pursuant to Articles 13, 9, 22 and 26 of the American Convention on Human Rights in relation to Articles 1(1) and 2 of the same instrument, to the detriment of Emilio Palacio Urrutia, pursuant to paragraphs 23 to 30 and 145 to 160 of this judgment. 5 4