Innocentia praesumpta: absoluciones en el Antiguo Régimen

Abstract

The acquittals dictated by the judges of the Old Regime have not been an object of interest to spanish juridical historiography. The present work covers them, focusing on one particularity, the acquittal of the instance. This, in contrary to the free acquittal, allowed the judges and the courts to decide for a juridical solution, created fundamentally by doctrinal jurisprudence, intermediary between the penalty for which vehement evidence for condemnation did not exist although reasonable suspicion could be assumed. The acquittal of the instance concluded by the judgment, left open the possibility to launch another different for the same case if the desired effect was not produced from the first judgement