47 176. Hence, the Court has ruled that only counsel provided by a law professional will meet the requirements of qualified defense, through which the accused are guided through the process and advised, inter alia, on the possibility of appealing acts that may undermine their rights. To prevent the accused from being advised by counsel is to severely limit the right to defense, which leads to procedural imbalance and leaves the individual unprotected before the sanctioning authority.183 177. The Court has also held in earlier cases that defense assistance should be provided by a law professional who is the guarantee of due process in which persons under investigation receive guidance concerning their rights and duties, and that this be respected. A qualified attorney can also exercise, among other things, critical control to ensure that the proceedings for the production of evidence are lawful184 and serves to offset the very vulnerable situation of persons being held in detention as regarding effective access to justice on an equal footing.185 178. There is no dispute as to the merits of this matter, as the State's defense merely argued a question of timing for the period when the accused did not have qualified defense. 179. In the instant case, regarding the appointment of defense counsel in the military jurisdiction, the Court would note that article 96 of the Code of Military Justice stated, “[a]ll those accused before military courts must appoint defense counsel. If they are unable or unwilling to do so, a court-appointed attorney is assigned by the chief magistrate of the trial court.”186 Article 97 stated, moreover, that “defense counsel must always be an active-duty or retired officer,” but there was no requirement for the person to be a law professional. 180. The fact that the alleged victims had no opportunity to be defended by a professional attorney was discussed in the judgment handed down on April 3, 1995 by the National Chamber of Criminal Cassation. Nevertheless, this same Chamber of Criminal Cassation held that in the specific case before it (defendant Galluzzi), “it has not been proven that the legal defense assisting [him] in the military venue undercut his rights in any way, and it is not evident that this circumstance violated the right to defense at trial, so long as the proper pursuit of legal due process protected by article 18 of the Constitution is satisfied with the judicial review governed by article 445-bis of the Code of Military Justice, the appeals stage in which defense is exercised by attorneys.” 181. The Court’s conclusion, on this basis, is that very evident regulatory shortcomings directly injured the right to defense and the principle of equality of arms of the alleged victims in the proceedings before the military justice system. In this specific case, the State did not demonstrate that the court-appointed defenders of the alleged victims were law professionals. More specifically, the evidence adduced does not show that any of the defenders was an attorney, but rather the opposite. 187 The result in this case was a procedural imbalance for 183 Cfr. Case of Barreto Leiva v. Venezuela, par. 61 and 62, and Case of Vélez Loor v. Panama. Preliminary Objections, Merits, Reparations and Costs. Judgment of November 23, 2010. Series C No. 218, par. 132. 184 Cfr. Case of Barreto Leiva v. Venezuela, par. 61. 185 Cfr. Case of Vélez Loor v. Panama, par. 132. 186 Cfr. Article 108 of the Code of Military Justice, July 16, 1951 (evidence file, folio 683). 187 As an example, the Court emphasizes that in a brief dated October 3, 1988, defense officer Ricardo Coletti stated, “it is quite clear, based on a reading of the prosecutor’s charges and in accordance with the provisions of chapter II of the Code of Military Justice, how legally qualified the prosecution is, while this defense, due simply to lack of legal training, does not have equal standing. Even so, despite having consulted with a law professional, this defense cannot be compared to the personal perspective of the case that an attorney would take; this is evident in