31 The Supreme Court of Justice, in the well-known “Montenegro” case (Judgments 303:1938), had occasion to rule on the validity of confessions by the accused obtained by torture. In that case, the [Supreme] Court observed that there was a conflict of interests: on the one hand, the social interest of applying criminal law promptly and efficiently and, on the other hand, the interest of the community that the rights of the individual should not be violated by unconstitutional methods of executing criminal law. [The] highest court inclined towards the supremacy of the latter interest, stating: “[…] this conflict has been resolved in our country since the dawn of the constitutional process when the 1813 Assembly, defining torture as “a horrendous invention to discover offenders,” ordered the burning of the instruments used to apply it […]; this decision was formalized in the prohibition to oblige anyone to testify against himself contained in article 18 of the Constitution; […] the judges’ compliance with this constitutional mandate cannot be limited to ordering the prosecution and punishment of those eventually found responsible for the abuse because, according importance to the result of their offense and using it as grounds for a conviction, is not only contradictory to the necessary rebuke, but compromises the satisfactory administration of justice by seeking to make it the beneficiary of an unlawful act.” […] The verification of the violation of this fundamental right requires, first, the obligation to separate all the evidence that relates to the statements that […] Bayarri […] made under the effects of abuse, threats and torture from the analysis of the case. [O]nly a few hours after the acts of torture, when making his preliminary statement in the courtroom, [Mr. Bayarri] provided a version that agreed with the contents of the testimony of the police agents […]. Despite this, the testimony rendered by […] Bayarri cannot be considered as evidence of a confession, since the circumstances surrounding [his statement] make the accused’s explanations hard to believe, insofar as he stated that he ratified the contents of the testimony of the police agents, because he was threatened by the same officials who tortured him and brought him to the court to make a statement. In this context, it should be underscored that this proceeding took place without the presence of his defense counsel, which indicates the lack of guarantees that surrounded the […] preliminary statement. To this must be added the particular treatment that, as can be inferred from the statement, Bayarri received in the courtroom. Bayarri bore visible marks of having recently suffered injury, yet the Court of First Instance ordered the forensic doctors only to examine him with regard to the alleged pain in his right ear. […] As stated above, we find ourselves faced with the hypothesis of exclusion of evidence obtained unlawfully. Pursuant to the legal doctrine of the Supreme Court of Justice, the State cannot use as evidence for the prosecution those elements that have been incorporated into an investigation unlawfully; that is, affecting individual rights recognized in the Constitution […]. In addition, it is necessary to establish whether the lawfulness of the said acts results in consequences over and above this exclusion. In this hypothesis, the legal doctrine of the poisoned fruit must be applied; this postulates that not only must the evidence obtained unlawfully be excluded, but any other evidence that was found or that was a result of the information obtained unlawfully must also be rejected. In application of this rule, which is to be found in the provisions of articles 511 and 512 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, the procedural decisions that were issued as a result of the said preliminary statement must be declared null and void.100 109. Based on the above, the Court find that the State violated Article 8(2)(g) of the American Convention to the detriment of Mr. Bayarri. C) 110. Presumption of innocence This Court has established that, since preventive detention is a precautionary rather 100 Judgment of June 1, 2004, of Chamber 1 of the Federal National Criminal and Correctional Appeals Chamber (file of attachments to the application, attachment 1.7, folios 34 to 35).