Archive note: This text comes from the old archive of Nomika Epilekta and is preserved with care for historical and informational reading.

On Friday, 1 July 2011, we learned that Michael Obus, a judge in New York, USA, revoked all the harsh restrictive conditions that had been imposed against Dominique Strauss-Kahn, so that he would avoid being imprisoned again, because the groundlessness of the complaints against him, which had been made by the chambermaid of the hotel in which he had stayed in New York on 14.05.2011, concerning her alleged sexual abuse, was ultimately established. It is already considered highly probable that he will be acquitted of the very serious charges at the trial of 18.07.2011. Thus, in substance, the correctness is confirmed of the recent article that had been published in “Nomika Epilekta”, entitled “presumption of innocence or presumption of guilt?”. In that article, special reference is also made to the judicial prosecution of the person in question and, more specifically, to his unlawful, brutal and indelible humiliation across the ends of the earth. On the occasion of this development (that is, the “deflation”) of the criminal prosecution against Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who was pitifully disgraced, of the humiliation of those who were accused and prosecuted for the “fixed matches”, as well as of those whose names were made public because of their pursuit for various offences, after the granting of prosecutorial authorizations for pillorying, humiliation and personal diminution, the extremely serious issue of the validity or not of the presumption of innocence and of what this means in practice returns to current affairs. It is known that the presumption of innocence is a fundamental constituent of the current criminal procedural system and an expression of the value or dignity of the human person and, according to the Constitution (which everyone invokes and everyone violates), it constitutes a primary obligation of the State, which must protect human dignity in every circumstance. According to this presumption, “everyone who has been charged shall be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law” [also article 48§1 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and article 6§2 of the European Convention on Human Rights]. Consequently, no human being should be pilloried or socially stigmatized and, much more, before his irrevocable conviction no accused person, obscure or prominent, poor or rich, great or small, ill or healthy, may be humiliated and pilloried, because the presumption of innocence applies to all, without distinction, and must be applied, its wording being perfectly clear and perceptible and understandable by everyone and not only by lawyers. The view that, by disclosing the accused person’s details, by publishing his photograph and also by broadcasting his arrest and his bringing before the state authority, handcuffed and accompanied by police officers, in a wretched condition, the public interest is supposedly served and society is protected from criminals, is unsupported. The humiliation of the accused does not reduce crime and does not help the pursuit of criminals, nor does it deter anyone from violating the law. On the contrary, with such vulgar public pillorying of citizens, society becomes accustomed to seeing people humiliated and the reflexes of citizens for the protection of the truly innocent, as well as of political and human rights, are weakened. Moreover, the human being may not be made a means for serving any purpose whatsoever, but his dignity must always and in every case be protected from any offences. The example of the suffering of the former president of the IMF is characteristic of the need for the presumption of innocence to be supported for every accused person and to be observed in all cases, without exception, as one of the highest achievements of civilization, together with the principle of respect for human dignity and value.