11 the admissibility stage and the answering brief before the Court, “it is evident that the arguments and case law sources by which the State seeks to comply with the requirement to prove the appropriateness and effectiveness of the application for amparo are different in the two briefs.” Consequently, the Commission concluded that “the arguments presented before the Inter-American Court to justify the failure to exhaust the application for constitutional amparo were time-barred.” 26. Additionally, the Commission reiterated “all aspects of the analysis made in its Admissibility Report, which was based on the information available at the time, as well as on the treaty-based and regulatory provisions that govern the burden of proof in this matter and that grant it the primary authority to rule on the requirements for admissibility of petitions.” Also, the Commission emphasized that the petitioner had indicated that, in Bolivia, no judgment reversing an application of the extinction of the criminal action had been handed down in an amparo proceeding, and that the State had not contested the petitioner’s argument regarding the ineffectiveness of the application for amparo for cases such as that of I.V., even though it was appropriate in accordance with the burden of proof applicable in these circumstances. Thus, “at the time of its ruling, the information available to the Commission indicated that I.V. had exhausted all the ordinary remedies during the criminal proceedings.” In these circumstances, the Commission determined that “the State failed to prove, at the proper procedural opportunity and pursuant to the rules for the burden of proof applicable to the objection of the failure to exhaust domestic remedies, that the application for amparo would have been appropriate and effective in this case.” Consequently, in the Commission’s opinion, I.V. had exhausted the domestic remedies. 27. Regarding the State’s argument that the State cannot be required to abide by the arguments made at the admissibility stage in the proceedings before the Court, the Commission stressed that this requirement is in keeping with the Court’s case law and constitutes a basic expression of the principles of “equality of arms” and legal certainty that apply to the inter-American procedure. Lastly, it emphasized that “a decision to the contrary would mean that the Inter-American Court could rule on arguments relating to the requirement of exhaustion of domestic remedies that the Commission was unable to evaluate and that the petitioners did not have the opportunity to contest at the corresponding stage.” 28. The presumed victim’s representative argued that the preliminary objection filed by the State before the Court did not correspond to the objection filed at the admissibility stage before the Commission. She indicated that the State had not filed any objection to the rule of the exhaustion of domestic remedies based on the cassation procedure at the admissibility stage before the Commission; consequently, filing an objection related to this remedy at the present procedural stage was time-barred. In addition, she argued that the cassation procedure was reserved for contesting rulings that decide restricted appeals, and not an incidental appeal as in this case with Ruling 514/2006, which was the judgment delivered by the First Criminal Chamber of the La Paz Superior Court of Justice. Consequently, the State’s pretension that “this Court […] consider that the cassation procedure should have been filed and exhausted by I.V., when according to the law and procedure this was not (and is not) feasible” constituted a lack of procedural loyalty. Lastly, the representative asserted that “[t]he argument on which the State founds this preliminary objection is totally false and proof of this is that the State has not cited any jurisprudential precedent to support it, and did not attach to its brief any final judgment (that is, a judgment in third instance) of the Supreme Court of Justice, or any constitutional judgment of the Constitutional Court.” She concluded that, in I.V.’s case, the cassation procedure was not admissible to contest Ruling 514/2006 and, therefore, asked the Court to reject the objection filed by the State. 29. The representative indicated that, in its observations of December 4, 2007, during the admissibility stage, the State had only indicated, in general, that the remedies of the domestic jurisdiction had not been exhausted, merely mentioning the application for constitutional amparo. However, the State did not reveal how the application for amparo was fully available and how it was

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