authorities’ lack of knowledge of the commission of a crime, individuals were guaranteed the option of bringing any violations of which they may have been victims to the attention of the State[,] which [allegedly] did not leave aside the State's obligation to launch an ex officio investigation.” 11. The Commission referred to the time-barred nature of the State’s arguments. In this regard, it maintained that Ecuador filed five briefs, dated September 27, 1995, June 11, 1996, September 27, 1999, October 2, 2001, and December 29, 2003, during the proceeding before it and prior to any ruling on the admissibility of the case. In its first two briefs, the State did not present any defense with regard to the failure to exhaust local remedies. It was in the briefs dated September 27, 1999, and October 2, 2001, that the Ecuadorian State explicitly invoked the alleged failure to meet the requirement of exhaustion of local remedies under Article 46(1) of the Convention. The Commission also highlighted that the arguments supporting the preliminary objection during the admissibility proceeding do not match those set forth by the State in its answer to the application before the Court. The Commission indicated that in proceedings before it, the State argued that a domestic proceeding had not concluded and had to be resolved by domestic tribunals. Despite this, the State’s central argument before the InterAmerican Court is that a criminal proceeding had not been launched because “the possibility of medical malpractice could not be presumed.” The Commission indicated that for this reason, Ecuador argued that it was up to the relatives of Pedro Miguel Vera Vera to file a complaint to initiate State action. By virtue of these considerations, the Commission requested that the Court dismiss the preliminary objection presented by the State, as the latter's arguments had not been filed at the proper moment before the Commission and were thus time-barred. 12. For their part, the representatives indicated that the “Code of Criminal Procedure in force at the time of the facts indicated that criminal prosecution is of public action and exercised ex officio.” Therefore, as of the date of the alleged victim’s death, the criminal judge or the police commissioner had jurisdiction to launch, ex officio, an initial investigation into an “investigable” infraction, as both the Eleventh Criminal Judge of Pichincha and the Fifth Police Commissioner - who collected the body in the city of Quito - were aware of the facts. As a consequence, they alleged that “it was not necessary to file a complaint in order to bring to the State’s attention that a crime had been committed that was prosecutable ex officio, as the facts were already known to [those officials].” The representatives indicated that in keeping with the “legislation in force on that date, [the Fifth Commissioner] had the obligation to launch the initial investigation. Nevertheless, after the reforms introduced in 1994, the proceeding had to be turned over to a criminal judge in order to continue, which [allegedly] demonstrates that the process has not yet concluded[,] as the tribunals with jurisdiction must move to rule on it and as of this date [the State] has not said what the result of that criminal proceeding was[.]” Finally, they indicated that the victim's family did indeed bring to the attention of the State, in a timely fashion, that Pedro Miguel Vera Vera had been wounded with a firearm and was being detained in a police holding cell. 6