law that would have allowed this Court to examine the merits of these arguments in relation to
a violation of Article 2 of the Convention.
C)
Right to appeal the judgment to a higher court (Article 8(2)(h) of the
Convention), in relation to the obligations under Articles 1(1) and 2 of this treaty,
with regard to Segundo Aniceto Norín Catrimán, Pascual Huentequeo Pichún
Paillalao, Juan Patricio Marileo Saravia, Florencio Jaime Marileo Saravia, José
Benicio Huenchunao Mariñán, Juan Ciriaco Millacheo Licán and Patricia Roxana
Troncoso Robles
262. Violations of the right to appeal the judgment before a higher court have only been
alleged in relation to the two proceedings applying the new Criminal Procedural Code, which
establishes that the means to contest a criminal judgment is the appeal for annulment. Neither
the Commission nor the representatives alleged a violation of Article 8(2)(h) of the
Convention with regard to Mr. Ancalaf Llaupe, in whose proceedings the 1906 Code of
Criminal Procedure was applied, which established the remedy of appeal, as well as the
possibility of filing a remedy of cassation.
1.
Arguments of the Commission and of the parties
263. The Commission offered several “[g]eneral comments on the right to appeal a court
ruling.” It stated that “in the case of criminal procedural systems […] which operate mainly by
the principles of the orality and immediacy of the proceedings, States are required to ensure
that those principles do not involve exclusions or restrictions of the scope of the review that the
courts have the authority to perform” and, at the same, it affirmed that “the review of a ruling
by a higher court should not impair the effectiveness of [these] principles.” It pointed out that
the Criminal Procedural Code of Chile excluded the remedy of appeal in the case of criminal
judgments delivered by an oral trial court and established that the only remedy against such
judgments was the appeal for annulment for the reasons expressly indicated in the law. The
Commission affirmed also that the right to appeal the criminal judgment convicting the victims
“was violated by Chile’s justice system, by the manner in which the courts that heard their
cases applied that right.” In addition, it considered that the domestic courts, “gave a
particularly narrow interpretation of their competence to rule on the said judgments, which was
that they could only address matters of law, and then on the grounds strictly prescribed by
law.” In its Merits Report, the Commission offered general considerations on the two judgments
that rejected the appeals for annulment, without analyzing them individually. In answer to a
question by the Court in this regard, it clarified that “in its Merits Report it [had] analyzed the
application of articles 373 and 374 of the Criminal Procedural Code” and “[i]n this regard, given
that the said norms were not applied to Mr. Ancalaf, the conclusion in the Merits Report should
be understood in relation to the other victims in the case.”
264. In its motions and arguments brief, the FIDH affirmed that Chile had violated Article
8(2)(h) of the Convention, in relation to Articles 1(1) and 2 of this instrument, to the detriment
of six of the presumed victims.288 It indicated that the system for appealing criminal judgments
in Chile was “not consistent with Article 8(2)(h)” of the Convention, because it excluded the
remedy of appeal against the judgments of oral criminal courts, and established the appeal for
annulment as the sole remedy against such judgments, which “correspond merely to a formal
review of the decision [but, u]nder no circumstances is it possible to assess the facts fully.” The
288
Segundo Aniceto Norín Catrimán, Pascual Huentequeo Pichún Paillalao, Florencio Jaime Marileo Saravia, José Benicio
Huenchunao Mariñán, Juan Patricio Marileo Saravia and Juan Ciriaco Millacheo Licán. The FIDH submitted arguments on the
judgment relating to Florencio Jaime Marileo Saravia, Juan Patricio Marileo Saravia, Huenchunao Mariñán, Millacheo Licán
and Ms. Troncoso Robles, but did not analyze the judgment that denied the appeals for annulment filed by Messrs. Norín
Catrimán and Pichún Paillalao.
91
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