the defense counsel failed to question certain inconsistencies in the case file. In addition, Manuela’s defense counsel failed to contest the guilty verdict by filing a remedy of cassation, or to inform her or her family about the possibility of doing this, and this meant that the presumed victim was unable to access the available judicial remedies. Second, the Commission considered that the State had violated the right to appeal the judgment, because the remedy of cassation “did not allow a wide-ranging control of factual, evidentiary and legal issues”; therefore, it did not have the “minimum characteristics required by Article 8(2)(h) of the Convention.” 114. The Commission also argued that the State was responsible for the violation of the duty to provide a statement of reasons, the presumption of innocence and the principle of equality and non-discrimination owing to the application of gender stereotypes during the investigation and the criminal trial. Such stereotyping was revealed: (i) by the initial investigation of the case, and by the judge who ordered the formal opening of the proceedings by presuming the presumed victim’s guilt, and (ii) in the judgment convicting her to prove the presumed victim’s motives. The Commission also stressed that “Manuela was a poor, illiterate young woman” and that “the stereotypes applied during the criminal trial cannot be disassociated from her poverty and reproductive age because, in the practice, their convergence produced a situation of greater vulnerability to being a victim of a specific type of discrimination.” 115. The representatives argued that the criminal trial was conducted in violation of judicial guarantees and judicial protection because: (i) the minimum conditions for the rigorous determination of Manuela’s criminal responsibility were not provided; (ii) Manuela gave a statement before she was notified of the charges brought against her; (iii) she did not have a suitable State-appointed defense counsel, in violation of the right to adequate time to prepare her defense, to communicate freely and privately with her legal counsel, and to have a public defender; iv) there was no effective remedy available to appeal the first instance judgment, and (v) Manuela was never heard at her trial, she did not have the opportunity to make a statement and to give her version of the facts to the judges who heard her case because she was prevented from doing so by the public defender on call that she had for the hearings. 116. They also underscored that the forensic evidence used to convict Manuela did not take into account: (i) Manuela’s serious preeclampsia at the time of the birth, which could have caused the death of the fetus; (ii) that “the autopsy of the fetus did not provide data that the lower airways were completely obstructed, sufficiently to indicate asphyxia”; (iii) that the hydrostatic docimasia test was used to determine whether the fetus was born alive and, already at the time of the events, it was considered that this was of no use to confirm whether a fetus had breathed; (iv) “the possibility that a precipitated or preterm delivery had occurred, which frequently causes the death of the fetus as a result of the tumultuous number of contractions without periods of relaxation, which prevents the uterine blood flow and therefore the oxygenation of the fetus,” and (v) the possibility that the fetus had accidentally fallen into the toilet causing its death. They also emphasized the possibility that the premature birth had been the result of the Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which was a possible complication. In addition, they argued that all the treatment that Manuela received from the State had a discriminatory impact because: (i) during the hearing at which Manuela was convicted, the forensic physician who performed the autopsy of the fetus answered the questions based on the stereotype of ���the superhuman sacrifices of maternity” according to which “Manuela should have overcome her fainting spell, her situation of preeclampsia, etc. to try, by all means, to save a fetus,” and (ii) stereotypes provided the grounds for initiating a trial, determining criminal responsibility, and the guilty verdict. 117. The State argued that: (i) Manuela had never been questioned without receiving prior notification of the charges against her and it had “only wanted to verify the situation reported by the medical staff”; (ii) in the record drawn up by the Cacaopera magistrate, the presumed 36