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remedy to reverse the extinction of the criminal action owing to the maximum duration of the
proceedings, the State added that “a series of rulings [existed] in which the Constitutional Court had
revoked decisions ordering the extinction of a criminal action owing to maximum duration of the
proceedings, based on the absence of substantiation and justification in the decisions that would
have permitted determining to whom the delays that led to the extinction of the criminal action could
be attributed.” Therefore, it asserted that, if I.V. had filed this remedy, it would have been effective
and appropriate to re-establish the rights that she considered violated, by establishing, based on an
adequate justification and grounds, that the delays could be attributed to the defendant and,
consequently, the court would have established the impossibility of the action extinguishing.
24.
Regarding the observations of the Commission and the representative, in its final arguments,
the State expanded on the appropriateness and effectiveness of the application for amparo, indicating
that: (i) since submitting its brief with observations on the admissibility of the petition, it had argued
that the application for amparo was the appropriate and effective remedy to address I.V.’s situation,
providing case law on the admissibility of the application for amparo against decisions ordering the
extinction of the criminal action; (ii) in its observations on admissibility, the State had also
demonstrated that the application for amparo had achieved the annulment of a decision determining
the extinction of the criminal action; (iii) although the factual circumstances of the rulings cited by
the State differed from the facts that are the purpose of the present dispute, this did not represent
an obstacle to proving that the rule of law evidenced by these decisions was applicable to this specific
case; (iv) the application for amparo was admissible in this specific case, because the constitutional
judge could have taken into account the possible effects on I.V.’s rights of the decision extinguishing
the criminal action, or that the defendant had intervened to cause a delay in the proceedings; (v)
the application for amparo is not a special remedy, as understood in international human rights law;
(vi) the standard established in the Convention and in case law for the exhaustion of domestic
remedies indicates that the “adequate and effective” remedies should be exhausted, without making
any reference to whether these are “ordinary or special,” so that even if it was a special remedy this
would have no relevance, and (vii) the fact that the State based the appropriateness and
effectiveness of the application for amparo on different constitutional rulings in its observations on
admissibility and in the answer submitted to the Court did not make its arguments time-barred.
Therefore, based on the principle of subsidiarity, the State asked the Court to declare that it was not
competent to hear this case.
25.
The Commission indicated that, “[e]ven though, at the admissibility stage before the
Commission, the State argued the failure to exhaust domestic remedies, the content of this objection
was based on the application for amparo, without any mention of the cassation procedure”;
consequently, it considered that this was “time-barred because it was not filed at the proper
procedural opportunity.” The Commission noted that “although the State invoked the application for
amparo at the admissibility stage, the grounds for its appropriateness and effectiveness are different
from those submitted to the […] Court in its answering brief.” It argued, citing this Court’s case law,
that “the rule on correspondence” should be applied, according to which the arguments presented
before the Court to support this preliminary objection should correspond to those presented to the
Commission during the admissibility stage. In this regard, and in this specific case, the Commission
asserted that in its brief of December 4, 2007, presented at the admissibility stage before the
Commission, the State had referred to three constitutional judgments in order to justify the
appropriateness and effectiveness of the application for amparo,10 while, in its answering brief before
the Inter-American Court, it had cited four different constitutional judgments. Based on the
foregoing, the Commission argued that, from a simple comparison between the brief presented at
The first, dated January 11, 2006, which referred to an amparo filed by a defendant, which requested precisely the
extinction of the criminal action. The second, of December 11, 2006, concerning an amparo against a declaration of
abandonment of the complaint, as a violation of the right of access to justice, and the third, of June 15, 2004, concerning a
matter of private property.
10