3 acknowledged, as expressly established in Article 128 of the Paraguayan Constitution.In this case, the criminal conviction can be seen as an indirect limitation of freedom of expression, which violated Article 13 of the American Convention.6. Prohibition to leave the country and reasonable duration. Eight years elapsed from the final decision of first instance, until a final judgment was handed down. The arguments indicated in the judgment show that there existed a clear restriction to leave the country during almost eight years; this constituted a flagrant and arbitrary violation of the presumption of innocence (Art. 17(1)), of individual liberty and security (Art. 9 of the Constitution) and the right to a defense (Art. 16 of the Constitution); all these rights recognized in Article 8(1) and 8(2) of the Convention. He [Canese] received a completely different treatment to other defendants, who, for the most part, enjoy procedural guarantees; also his right to equality was disregarded (Arts. 46 and 47 of the Constitution). On this point, the attitude of the judicial agents involved is striking, because, systematically and repeatedly they denied his requests for permission to leave the country, reaching the inadmissible extreme of maintaining a precautionary measure for more time that the maximum sanction possible; in these proceedings, the latter was only 18 months at first and then nothing – when the Court of Appeal revoked the sanction of imprisonment, and the Supreme Court of Justice annulled the whole proceeding. 7. The judges did not apply the Constitution or the iura novit curia principle, as they should have done; they should have rectified the proceedings and not conformed to what the defense did or did not do. That argument is inadmissible when fundamental rights are at stake, which even involved the responsibility of the Paraguayan State, that was a party jointly and severally as established in article 106 of the Constitution. Moreover, the decisions of second and third instance did not consider the conduct of the judges who permitted a precautionary measure to continue for many years. 8. In our opinion, the precautionary measure, which was arbitrary, illegal and irrational, was the measure that caused most harm. The CIVIL PROCEEDING WAS NOT EXHAUSTED; consequently, in principle, compensation for nonpecuniary damage could not be established coercively, because it would have established a jurisdiction parallel to the ordinary jurisdiction, creating a supplementary judiciary, in violation of Article 137 of the Constitution, which establishes the priorities within the legal system. This could even have led to an erroneous use of international human rights treaties. International treaties and conventions are ranked below the Constitution and, it is especially evident that, in the instant case, it was not a matter of denying a right, but of indicating that the civil action for compensation should have been filed, and that the Paraguayan State is able to guarantee this type of trial, as shown by the case of Napoleón Ortigoza, Hilario Orellado et al., 3 where the Paraguayan State was condemned to pay many millions of guaranis for compensation and non-pecuniary damage, as a result of civil actions following the annulment of the judgment by the Supreme Court of Justice. 3 This is established in a final judgment of the Supreme Court of Justice.