22 accordance with the international obligations assumed by the State in the sphere of human rights. Arguments of the representatives 48. In relation to Article 4(1) of the American Convention, the representatives argued that: (a) The right to life is recognized to be the supreme human right and although the American Convention does not prohibit the application of the death penalty, it does tend towards its gradual elimination. In other words, the death penalty is considered only in the context of truly exceptional circumstances; (b) The State condemned Mr. Raxcacó Reyes to death for the crime of kidnapping or abduction established in Article 201 of the Penal Code, which was reformed by Decree No. 81/96, thus mandatorily establishing the death penalty in all cases of kidnapping or abduction, irrespective of the victims, the circumstances surrounding the facts and the results. All of this in evident contradiction of the general obligation concerning the obligations to respect the right of all persons subject to its jurisdiction and to adopt provisions of domestic law adapted to the standards established in the American Convention; and (c) By automatically imposing the death penalty, the State disregarded the fundamental principles of the theory of crime and punishment, which call for consideration of both the individual circumstances of the person participating in the crime and the specifics of the crime itself. The mandatory death penalty violates the understanding that each person is unique and, consequently, merits individual consideration by the criminal justice system. 49. Regarding Article 4(2) of the Convention, the representatives indicated that: (a) Mr. Raxcacó Reyes was condemned to death as a result of a crime that was not included in domestic law when Guatemala ratified the American Convention; (b) In 2000, the Constitutional Court of Guatemala delivered a ruling in which it questioned the expansion of the scope of the death penalty, because the crime punishable by this penalty under Article 201 of the Penal Code, before the entry into force of the Pact of San José, was a complex crime that included two types of punishable conduct: (a) the kidnapping of a person, and (b) the death of the victim. These are two different types of crimes, even though the name is the same, because the purpose of the former category is to protect the juridical right to life while the purpose of the latter category is to protect the right to individual freedom. There are notorious differences in the nature of the crime between the original Article 201 and the reformed Article 201. The original crime category related to a result, and the current version relates to the mere act; and (c) By varying substantially the contents of Article 201 of the Penal Code, the application of the death penalty was extended to a new crime, violating