offense pursuable ex officio, the procedure under domestic law to be exhausted in this case was a criminal investigation, which the State itself was required to initiate and move forward. 36. To begin with, it is worth noting that by the time the petition was filed with the Inter-American Commission on April 20, 2001, almost 9 years had already elapsed without there being a first instance judgment in the proceeding for manslaughter, a case that began to be processed on June 15, 1992. The Commission finds that the fact that a ruling at first instance was still pending in the investigation at that time constitutes, prima facie, an unwarranted delay under the terms of article 46.2.c of the Convention, and is, therefore, grounds for an exception to the rule of prior exhaustion of domestic remedies. However, the Commission notes that after the petition was lodged the proceeding continued, as it is described below. 37. Based on information presented by the parties, the Commission finds that the complaint filed by the petitioners on June 1, 1992, prompted a criminal proceeding for manslaughter to be opened.10 Eleven years later, on July 18, 2003, the court of first instance reportedly acquitted the accused in the case of all blame and charges. That judgment was appealed by the prosecutor assigned to the case and later upheld by the Criminal Court of Appeals on November 27, 2003. The petitioners are said to have filed an extraordinary federal appeal against that decision, which was rejected on March 15, 2004, by the Court of Appeals under the argument that is was “time-barred.” 38. The State, for its part, argued that the petitioners had failed properly to exhaust domestic remedies because the fact that the extraordinary federal appeal that they filed was time-barred impeded the case from being examined by the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation. Therefore, it said that “that circumstance makes applicable the decision of the IACHR in case 10.382,” in which it said that: [I]f the highest court of the land has stated that an apparent lack of procedural expertise on the part of the petitioner made it impossible for him to secure a review of the penalty imposed on him, it is not for the Commission to try to determine or assess whether the Court was mistaken. The rules that govern procedural law reflect methodological criteria intended to ensure the orderly use of judicial actions and to make the work of the courts more efficient and effective.11 39. The petitioners offered two different arguments on that point. On one hand, they pointed to the existence of a “maneuver” that prevented them from lodging the remedy in time. They say that the deadline for filing the appeal expired on December 23, 2003, at 9:30 a.m.12 and that at the time that it was filed, instead of indicating the actual time at which it was filed (9:29 a.m.) with the official date stamp device, personnel of the Fifth Chamber of the Court wrote “9:32” by hand and with that “maneuver” access to the Supreme Court was prevented “by two minutes.” The petitioners also presented a submission claiming the futility of the extraordinary federal appeal in the instant case, arguing that a complaint to the Supreme Court of Justice that involved the body of expert witnesses that reported to it, as well as with senior officers of the judiciary, would never have succeeded, hence “the reasonableness of resorting to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.” 40. The Commission offers the following observations with respect to this point. In first place, regarding the State’s argument concerning the application of the precedent set in case 10.382, the Commission points out that the facts and nature of the proceeding at the domestic level in that case differ from the case under examination here. Specifically, case 10.382 concerned alleged violations of the American Convention by reason of a decision by a judicial body to order payment of a sum of money that was not a sanction but a 10 Magistrate’s Court No. 8 (Secretariat 63), “BRITEZ ARCE, Cristina - Manslaughter.” Case No. 2.391. 11 IACHR, Report No. 6/98, Case 10.382, Ernesto Máximo Rodríguez, Argentina, February 21, 1998, para. 62. Under article 124 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Nation, the petitioners had until the first two hours of the day after the deadline expired to file the appeal. Inasmuch as the regulation judicial business day begins at 7:30 a.m., that time limit ran until 9:30 a.m. on the day after the deadline expires. Cf. Code of Criminal Procedure of the Nation, article 164. “Should the deadline expire after office hours, the act to be fulfilled within same deadline may be done during the first two hours of the following business day.” 12 7