“specifying that the lapse of more than three years in deciding it is a factor that meets the requirements of the exception established owing to an unwarranted delay.” The Commission accorded “special relevance in its analysis to the problem of the provisional status of the judges and prosecutors, as well as to the risk this problems signified to ensuring the guarantees of independence and impartiality to which the accused are entitled and which, evidently, constitute the institutional presumption ensuring that the individual has appropriate and effective remedies that they must exhaust.” In this regard, the Commission considered that “the State ha[d] not presented to the Commission information on the existence of adequate remedies to contest the assignment or removal of judges in this situation.” Furthermore, the Commission indicated that remedies such as recusal “are not appropriate to contest the temporary status of judges assigned to the proceedings or their removal owing to their actions.” Thus, the Commission found that “the removal of several temporary judges in this case, following the adoption of decisions concerning the presumed victim’s situation, may have affected his access to the remedies of the domestic jurisdiction and, therefore, this aspect of the demand for the requirement in question should be exempted.” 23. In its final written observations, the Commission indicated that the State “had mentioned, in abstract, the procedural stages and the respective remedies regulated in the Organic Code of Criminal Procedure, which would be relevant if the representatives’ arguments referred merely to the inexistence of remedies. However, the issues raised in this case are of a structural nature and respond to an actual situation of the Judiciary that goes far beyond the abstract regulation of the criminal proceedings.” 24. The representatives asked that: (i) “the challenge of the Court’s judges and its Secretary be rejected, and also the contestation of the recusal of Judge Eduardo Vio Grossi, because these two elements had been cited erroneously as preliminary objections and because the Inter-American Court had decided these issues previously,” and (ii) “the objection of failure to exhaust domestic remedies be rejected.” In this regard, they argued that the latter objection was “time-barred because it had not been cited appropriately at the first proper procedural opportunity before the Inter-American Commission.” They added that this objection should be rejected “additionally and subsidiarily, owing to the failure to comply with the rules on the distribution of the burden of proof imposed on the State, when citing the preliminary objection of failure to exhaust domestic remedies, [because it had not] indicated: (a) the domestic remedies that should have been exhausted, and (b) the effectiveness of those remedies. […] Additionally and subsidiarily, because Mr. Brewer Carías was not obliged to exhaust domestic remedies based on Article 46(2) of the American Convention. […] In addition to the above, because Mr. Brewer Carías had exhausted all the remedies to defend himself that were actually available.” 25. The representatives argued that the presumed victim had “repeatedly approached the temporary supervisory judge and the Appeals Court to request the re-establishment of his rights.” They also indicated that, when answering the charges, the violation of the judicial guarantees of Mr. Brewer Carías had been denounced, requesting “a declaration of the nullity of the proceedings in view of the said violations.” They indicated that this request for annulment had not been decided “to date,” which “made it impossible that the said request for annulment could be effective.” 26. The representatives argued that, in this case, what is being contested “is an investigation and criminal charges that are absolutely groundless, and that form part of a moral and political lynching”; consequently, “there is no sense in speculating about an eventual remedy of appeal or even of cassation; [because] those remedies w[ould] be appropriate for other matters.” They also indicated that “the State’s arguments imply that 10