12 49. Having an appointed counsel does not, in itself, ensure defense during the prosecution. This has been noted, very often, in the proceedings before this Court. If it is not, then, just any –nominal- defense, bur rather true defense –as the satisfaction of any human right should be-, we should specify its characteristics, which would require independence, sufficiency, competence, gratuitousness, completeness and timeliness, and provide the means for it to exist. Otherwise, protection of the human rights of the accused will, once and again, stumble on the deficiencies of the defense, ultimately reflected in violation of the law, poorly disguised by apparent exercise of this right, one that does not stand up to even the slightest analysis. XIII. Sufficient evidence 50. Another point that stands out in the Judgment to which I attach this Opinion is what we might call “sufficient evidence.” I do not confuse probatory sufficiency for an arrest warrant with that for a definitive judgment, respectively. Obviously there is a difference. Nevertheless, all acts that involve an exercise of State power and procedural and/or criminal restriction of liberty must be based on “sufficient evidence.” There can be no action without any evidence, and there should be no action based on weak evidence. Procedural law must emphasize this point, taking into account that, clearly, the proceeding is a probatory channel and its results depend on gathering, admission, and assessment of evidence. There can be no issue more delicate than this one as regards legislators’ reflection and justices’ performance. 51. Confession –whose excessive credence fosters torture; we see this in the instant case- was once seen as the “queen of evidence.” Fortunately, that is no longer so. Yet still today certain legal systems –or certain investigative and procedural practices- have filled this niche with devotion regarding the statement of the accomplice, of the fellow traveler along the road of crime, of the informant who seeks exoneration from liability or exemption from punishment by throwing the former or directing the latter toward another person, who may be guilty or innocent. It would be best if the conviction that the co-perpetrator’s testimony, in itself, is insufficient, spread and became the rule. 52. Article 108 of the Criminal Procedures Code in force in the State when the facts took place, establishes that “in no case will a judge admit the co-defendants as witnesses.” This provision may be extreme, but it states a commendable concern. In the case examined, the apparently coerced statement of a hypothetical participant in a crime, who was also the singular witness and only means of “certainty,” unsupported by other evidentiary instruments, determined the prosecution and protracted incarceration of the accused, contrary to logic and even to the legal standard in force at the time of the facts brought before the Inter-American Court. Said prosecution and incarceration were groundless, as would be established years later. XIV. Reasonable term 53. The issue of reasonable term also comes up in this case, as it has in many others. It is, certainly, one of the issues that have been examined most often by international human rights jurisprudence. It addresses the difficult problem of the duration of preventive detention, in addition to that of the duration of the proceeding as a whole. Justice delayed, according to the well-known adage, is justice denied. It is bad when the person awaiting that justice, which moves hesitantly and arrives very late, is deprived of his liberty; worse yet when the deprivation of liberty is an arbitrary one.