Supreme Court of Justice annulled the entire process that had been underway for four years in the military jurisdiction, assigned competence to the ordinary jurisdiction, and ordered that the proceedings be reinitiated. 31. The State also alleges that it was never inactive throughout the process. Once the case was transferred to ordinary jurisdiction, the Public Ministry, on June 28, 2004, sent a notice to the Chief of the Personnel Command of the National Guard requesting the appearance of six officers. Official correspondence was also sent to the commanders of several National Guard detachments requesting the appearance of other individuals. Moreover, on June 30, 2004, the Seventh Prosecutor’s Office of Táchira approved the official letter to the Scientific, Criminal and Forensic Investigations Corps so that the latter would carry out other actions to determine all applicable responsibility; these included the planimetric survey, ballistic trajectory, and an inspection of the scene where the events occurred. 32. Article 46(1)(a) of the American Convention states that admission by the Commission of a petition requires that “...the remedies under domestic law have been pursued and exhausted in accordance with generally recognized principles of international law.” It further establishes, in section 2, that this requirement shall not be applicable when “there has been an unwarranted delay in rendering a final judgment under the aforementioned remedies.” For its part, the Inter-American Court has stated, in its interpretation, that only those remedies that are adequate and effective for addressing the violations allegedly committed by State agents must be exhausted.”6 33. In the case at hand, the Commission considers that the exception for unwarranted delay in rendering a final judgment under the remedy set forth in Article 46.2 (c) of the American Convention is applicable. 34. In effect, at the time this report was written, in other words, more than seven years after the death of Johan Alexis Ortiz, the State has not concluded the criminal proceedings required to resolve this matter internally.7 Due to the consequent nullities declared in the case owing to compounded due process violations, the investigation has been reinitiated four times. Hence, the IACHR notes that, more than seven years after the events, the jurisdiction responsible for judicial clarification of the student’s death been established only recently. The adequacy of the remedies employed to establish individual responsibility aside, the delay in the judicial investigation suggests that the victims and their families have lacked access to an effective remedy in the terms of Article 46(2) of the American Convention. Therefore the exception to the requirement of prior exhaustion of domestic remedies before resorting to the interAmerican system must apply to their claim.8 35. It only remains to be stated that the invocation of exceptions to the rule of exhaustion of domestic remedies set forth in Article 46(2) of the Convention are closely linked to the determination of possible violations of certain rights enshrined therein, such as the right to access to justice. However, Article 46(2), by virtue of its nature and purpose, is a norm with autonomous content vis-à-vis the substantive 6 Inter-American Court, Velásquez Rodríguez Case, Judgment of July 29, 1988, Ser. C Nº 4, para. 63. 7 IACHR. Report 14/04 Admissibility. Peru. Case 11.568, Luis Antonio Galindo Cárdenas, February 27, 2004, paras. 39 and 40. IACHR Report 52/97, Admissibility, Nicaragua. Case 11.218, Arges Sequeira Mangas.February 18, 1998, para. 96. 8 IACHR, Report 25/03 Admissibility. Colombia. Petition 289/2002, Santo Domingo. March 6, 2003, para. 22.