The Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia has confirmed the acquittal of a man accused of rape in Seville, considering that the victim's statement lacked consistency and there was no corroborating evidence to support it.
The Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia (TSJA) issued an order, dated July 8, 2026, confirming the acquittal of a man accused of rape in the capital of Seville. The decision upholds the criteria of the Provincial Court, which had already acquitted the defendant by applying the principle of 'in dubio pro reo' in light of the doubts raised by the complainant's testimony.
The events date back to the night of December 20 to 21, 2021. According to the complaint, filed on August 21, 2022, the victim had gone to her uncle's house to work on the computer. There were her cousin and a friend of his, the accused. The woman reported that, around 11:00 PM, her cousin's friend had forced her to perform oral sex in the kitchen and then took her to a nearby vacant lot to penetrate her vaginally against her will.
Lack of corroborating evidence and contradictions
However, during the trial, the Provincial Court of Seville considered that the victim's statement had “certain fissures” and that there were no objective corroborating elements to support it. The accounts of the complainant and the accused were contradictory, and there were no witnesses or conclusive forensic evidence to tip the scales. Thus, the court decided to acquit the accused as it did not reach the necessary conviction of certainty to convict.
The prosecution appealed the ruling to the TSJA, alleging an error in the evaluation of the evidence. However, the judges of the high Andalusian court have dismissed the appeal, stating that the factual reasoning of the acquittal ruling does not suffer from “irrationality or manifest error.” The order recalls that, according to Article 790.2 of the Criminal Procedure Law, to review an acquittal ruling for error in the evaluation of evidence, it is necessary to justify the insufficiency or lack of rationality in the factual reasoning, something that has not occurred in this case.
The 'in dubio pro reo' principle at the centre of the debate
The TSJA's resolution emphasizes that, even if the annulment of the ruling had been requested, it would be necessary for the reasoning of the same to incur in “arbitrariness, unreasonableness or manifest and grave errors” that would make its lack of motivation evident. As such an extreme was not observed, the appeal cannot succeed. The acquittal ruling was based on the application of the 'in dubio pro reo' principle, which establishes that, in case of doubt, the accused should be favoured.
This case has generated intense social debate regarding the evaluation of evidence in sexual crimes. Women's rights advocacy organizations have criticized that the lack of corroborating evidence should not be an insurmountable obstacle to conviction, while legal sectors argue that the presumption of innocence must prevail when the victim's testimony is not sufficiently solid.
The TSJA's decision is final and cannot be subject to ordinary appeal. The accused, whose identity has not been disclosed, is thus definitively acquitted. For the reader in Seville, this ruling represents a new chapter in the complex relationship between justice and the credibility of testimonies in cases of sexual violence, an issue that continues to generate controversy in Andalusian society.
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