CAT/C/75 page 33 at length above, this is due to the way detainees are handled: although they are placed at the disposal of the public prosecutor or taken to a medical expert for a certificate to be issued, in practice they remain under the control and supervision of, and subject to pressure from, the officers who apprehended them.”26 154. The Committee members consider this situation to be unsatisfactory and believe that a different model to the one now used for medical reports should be adopted as a matter of urgency. They are favourable to the proposal of the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT) in the framework of the Technical Cooperation Programme between the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Government of Mexico. According to the proposal, two standard, binding report models should be adopted: one for check-ups performed during a torture investigation, the other for use in routine medical examinations. The latter model should be used whenever a person, whether imprisoned, detained or at large is found, on being examined by a doctor, to display objective signs, unaccounted for by his or her medical record, of torture or ill-treatment warranting notification to the investigating authorities and, where appropriate, the issuance of a report. 155. Article 20 of the Constitution stipulates that a confession made before any authority other than the Public Prosecutor or a judge, or made before them but without defence counsel present, shall have no evidentiary value. In theory, the presence of the defence counsel or other “trusted individual” is sufficient means of preventing torture. In practice, however, it is not effective in the majority of cases. Counsel is present only during the accused’s statement to the public prosecutor, at which time, as we have seen, many detainees are afraid to say they have been tortured. In addition, in a great many cases lawyers are appointed by the court; the detainees do not know or trust them and do not understand their role, are not allowed to meet with them in private, and in many cases never see them again. 156. Many interviewees told the Committee members that the system of court-appointed defence counsel was inadequate and, in addition, did not exist in every public prosecutor’s office throughout the country, as it was supposed to. 157. Federal District Human Rights Commission recommendation 4/2000 of 5 April 2000 cites a document issued by the Legal Services Department of the Federal District, which states: “The service provided by the Federal District system of court-appointed defence counsel does not meet minimum quality requirements due to the insufficient number of staff (…). In particular, 33 public defenders, i.e. 11 for each of the three shifts, cover 74 public attorney’s office investigations bureaux, 11 departments and 36 courts. In practical terms this means that each defender is responsible for at least eight investigations bureaux and defends an average of nine people per day.”27 158. The President of the Oaxaca High Court said that the system of court-appointed defence counsel was very poor, that in many cases the defendants did not see their counsel after their initial statement, which hampered counsel in producing evidence in their favour. The President of the Guerrero High Court spoke in similar terms, noting that court-appointed counsel played no more than a passive role. However, the Guerrero State Attorney said that the professional skills of the court-appointed counsel had improved, since they were now required to hold law degrees, and that their numbers had increased.