5 right to have a court case settled within a reasonable period of time. They argued that from the manner in which the State prosecuted the case, its objective was to allow the crime to go unpunished, which in the petitioners’ view violated the right to the truth, to the detriment of the victim’s next of kin and society in general. 33. As for the right to life, the petitioners again cite the case law of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights concerning the State’s duty to prevent its agents from violating that right. They mention that the State incurred responsibility in this case not simply because one of its agents arbitrarily deprived José Luis García Ibarra of his life, but also because the administration of justice failed to conduct a serious investigation of the crime and to impose adequate punishment. 34. In their arguments, the petitioners focus mainly on the prosecution of the case in the domestic courts, indicating that there was not an adequate judicial practice. To back up this assertion, the petitioners observe that at the start of the case, a number of motions for disqualification were filed and proceedings were conducted to ascertain whether a conflict of jurisdiction existed between police jurisdiction and ordinary jurisdiction. The petitioners go on to report that after the order for commencement of oral proceedings was issued, the Criminal Court of Esmeraldas issued three rulings based on three entirely different opinions written by the judges of that Court. The petitioners allege that two judges wrote opinions on the merits of the case, in which they acknowledged that a crime had been committed, but differed on the classification of the crime and, by extension, the severity of the penalty; the third judge who wrote an opinion did not go into the merits, but instead examined the jurisdictional issue and was of the view that the court should declare that it did not have jurisdiction over the case. 35. The petitioners report that the Public Prosecutor’s Office filed a cassation appeal and the accused filed an appeal for the annulment of the verdict and a cassation appeal. As a result, on January 22, 1996, the case went to the Esmeraldas Superior Court for a decision on the appeal to vacate the judgment. The petitioners state that on May 15, 2000, the court dismissed that appeal and referred the case to the Supreme Court, which on February 26, 2002 confirmed the sentence imposed on the grounds that the doubt regarding the police officer’s willfull intent should be decided in favor of the accused. 36. The petitioners observe that the private plaintiff and mother of the alleged victim, Vicenta Ibarra Ponce, withdrew from the case on July 25, 1996, as a result of a supposed financial settlement reached with the accused. They point out that this is not the first case in which the perpetrators reach financial settlements with the victim’s next of kin; the petitioners contend that these settlements are the result of a lack of faith in the country’s judicial institutions. The petitioners point out that perpetrators elude justice by offering financial settlements to get the accusing party to withdraw from a case. 37. The petitioners observe that the proceedings did not meet the legal deadlines established in the Code of Criminal Procedure, under which a case was not to last longer than 187 days. They point out that the case had dragged on for nine years and five months before being decided. They argue that should the Commission not accept their argument regarding the failure to comply with the deadlines established in domestic law, the analysis should take into account the following: a) the complexity of the case; b) the procedural activity of interested party, and c) the conduct of the judicial authorities.