Epistemic legitimacy of punitive power in the constitutional state: procedural truth, evidence, and control of judicial discretion

Abstract

The legitimacy of punitive power is commonly examined through the legality of criminal offences, punishment, and procedural safeguards; however, every criminal judgment also presupposes factual claims that must be rationally justified. This article analyzes the epistemic conditions required to legitimize the production of procedural truth and their implications for constitutional control of punitive power. A qualitative legal-documentary study was conducted using doctrinal, hermeneutic, analytical, and comparative methods. Ecuadorian constitutional and criminal provisions, decisions of the Constitutional Court of Ecuador and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, classical legal scholarship, and recent scientific literature on evidence, legal reasoning, cognitive bias, safeguards, and victim participation were examined. The analysis shows that procedural truth should be understood neither as an infallible reproduction of reality nor as a discretionary construction by the adjudicator, but as a rationally corroborated factual hypothesis produced within institutionally controlled procedures. The study argues that the presumption of innocence, adversarial proceedings, judicial reasoning, appellate review, and rules governing the admission and assessment of evidence simultaneously perform legal and epistemic functions. Accordingly, the article proposes a model of epistemically controlled judicial discretion, recognizing inevitable interpretive margins while subjecting them to reinforced requirements of justification, evidence, and constitutional compatibility.