IV. ANALYSIS ON COMPETENCE AND ADMISSIBILITY A. Competence 30. The petitioners have standing to lodge petitions with the Inter-American Commission pursuant to Article 44 of the American Convention. The alleged victims, Messrs. Dial and Dottin, are persons regarding whom the State agreed to respect and ensure the rights enshrined in the American Convention. As regards the State, Trinidad & Tobago became a party to the American Convention when it deposited its instrument of ratification on May 28, 1991. Consequently, the IACHR is competent ratione personae to examine the petition. 31. Trinidad & Tobago subsequently denounced the American Convention by notice given on May 26, 1998, which then took effect one year later, in accordance with Article 78 of the American Convention. As a Member State of the OAS since 1967, with respect to acts done by the State wholly before May 28, 1991 or wholly after May 26, 1999, Trinidad & Tobago is subject to the international human rights obligations arising from the American Declaration and the OAS Charter, and to the Inter-American Commission’s authority to supervise the State’s compliance with those obligations.14 The allegations presented in this petition took place from the alleged victims’ arrest on February 24, 1995, encompassing their trial which resulted in their conviction and sentence to death on January 21, 1997 -–after the State’s ratification of the American Convention and when that instrument was still in force for Trinidad & Tobago-– and continue to this date. 32. Therefore, the Inter-American Commission has competence ratione materiae and ratione temporis and will examine the State’s obligations under the American Convention for facts which occurred wholly before May 26, 1999, as well as its obligations under the American Declaration for facts occurring wholly after May 26, 1999. The IACHR will leave to the merits of the case a determination of the specific applicability of either/both the American Convention or/and the American Declaration to each claim of the petitioners. 15 The IACHR also has competence ratione loci to entertain the petition, inasmuch as it alleges violations of human rights that are protected in the American Declaration and in the American Convention, which supposedly have taken place within the territory of Trinidad & Tobago. B. Exhaustion of domestic remedies 33. Article 46.1.a of the American Convention and Article 31.1 of the IACHR’s Rules of Procedure specify that in order to decide on the admissibility of a matter, the Inter-American Commission must verify whether the remedies of the domestic system have been pursued and exhausted in accordance with generally recognized principles of international law or whether to apply the exceptions contemplated in Article 46.2 of the American Convention and/or Article 31.2 of the Rules of Procedure. 34. In the present case, the State requested that the IACHR declare the petition inadmissible under the non-exhaustion of domestic remedies rule, because the alleged victims had not filed a constitutional motion before the domestic courts in Trinidad & Tobago. For their part, the petitioners submit that the alleged victims have pursued all post-conviction appeals before the domestic courts. In this regard, the petitioners emphasize that they invoked post-conviction remedies both prior to and after the 1999 affidavits of the eyewitnesses. The IACHR observes that, according to the information available in the file, following their conviction, the appeals of the alleged victims were dismissed and their convictions affirmed on October 16, 1997 and July 14 See Articles 1.2.b and 20 of the IACHR’s Statute. See also I/A Court H.R., Advisory Opinion OC-10/89 Interpretation of the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man Within the Framework of Article 64 of the American Convention on Human Rights, July 14, 1989, Ser A N° 10, paras. 35-45; I/A Comm. H.R., Res. 3/87, Case 9647, James Terry Roach and Jay Pinkerton, United States, 22 September 1987, Annual Report 1986-87, paras. 46-49; Brian D. Tittemore, The Mandatory Death Penalty in the Commonwealth Caribbean and the Inter-American Human Rights System: An Evolution in the Development and Implementation of International Human Rights Protections, 13 WM. & MARY BILL RTS. J. 445 (2004) at page 456”. 15 See mutatis mutandi IACHR. Report N. 137/09, Admissibility, Reshi Bisoon and Foster Serrete, Trinidad and Tobago, November 13, 2009, para. 36. 6