51. The legal system applied in the process against Mr. Mohamed did not provide any ordinary remedy to appeal the conviction of second instance.45 B) Subsequent legal remedies B.1) Special federal appeal46 52. The only remedy available against that final conviction was the special federal appeal, contemplated in Article 256 of the Code of Civil and Commercial Procedure, whose admissibility requirements established by law were limited to the federal matters and the clearly arbitrary nature of the judgment (infra paras. 102 and 103). The appeal had to be filed “before the judge, court or administrative body that issued the decision that prompted it,” which “shall decide on the admissibility of the appeal” and, “[i]f it admits it, […] shall refer the case to the Supreme Court” of Justice.47 53. On March 13, 1995, Mr. Mohamed’s defense attorney filed a special federal appeal against the conviction before the First Chamber of the National Chamber of Appeals on Correctional Matters, which rendered its decision, “in accordance with Articles 256 and 257 of the Code of Civil and Commercial Procedure” and “based on Articles 14 and 15 of Law 48.” The defense requested that the Chamber consider the appeal lodged in a timely manner, admit it, and transfer the proceedings to a Superior court and that the higher court, “decide the annulment of the final judgment […] ordering the issuance of a new decision according to law.”48 In the appeal, Mr. Mohamed’s defense counsel argued that constitutional guarantees of access to the federal level had been affected and, among the reasons for the complaint, he mentioned: i) the “error in the legal basis” for having “sought justification in a rule not applicable to this case” given that the decree cited in the ruling was not in effect at the time of the traffic accident; ii) the selfcontradiction in the judgment; iii) having disregarded decisive evidence, including “the planimetric survey [… that] indicates that there is a distance of 76.06 meters from the 45 Cf. Expert opinion rendered by Julio B. J. Maier before the Inter-American Court in the public hearing held on June 20, 2012, and expert opinion rendered by Alberto Bovino before the Inter-American Court at the public hearing held on June 20, 2012. Likewise, the amicus curiae brief filed by the Chair of Human Rights of the Law Faculty of the National University of Cuyo (Merits file, volume II, page 823). 46 In this Judgment the Court will use the terms “special federal appeal” or “special appeal” to refer to the procedural mechanism for challenging a judgment enshrined in Article 256 of the Code of Civil and Commercial Procedure of Argentina, as a “special recourse of appeal before the Supreme Court of Justice ” and Law 48 of 1863, to which the previous norm refers, wherein Article 14 establishes the cases in which one can “appeal final judgments to the Supreme Court” (attachments to the Report on Merits 173/10, Annex 16). The Court points out that the Commission, the parties, the expert witnesses and the amicus curiae brief, refer to this remedy interchangeably as “special appeal”, “special appeal before the Supreme Court” or “special federal appeal.” In this Judgment, the Court shall refer to said remedy mainly as “special federal appeal”, bearing in mind that this meaning identifies this procedural institution according to its purpose. In this regard, the expert witness Julio B. J. Maier informed this Court that “the special appeal in Argentina only introduces federal matters, it is a remedy that is very limited to certain legal issues and federal legal matters.” 47 Cf. Code of Civil and Commercial Procedure (Law 17.454), Articles 256 and 257 (Attachments to the Merits Report 173/10, Annex 16). The Commission submitted as Annex 16 the “relevant parts of the Code of Civil and Commercial Procedure Argentina. Available at: http://novo.dir_eitoprocessual.org.br/fileManager/Codigo procesal civil y comercial de la nacion.pdf”. According to Article 256 of this Code, the admissibility requirements for the special appeal are established “in Article 14 of Law 48”. The Inter-American Commission did not provide the aforementioned Law 48, but in Article 256 of the Code of Civil and Commercial Procedure, submitted as Annex 16, the content of Article 14 of Law 48 is transcribed. The Court points out that the State did not submit any observations with respect to the content of the document offered by the Commission as Annex 16 to its Report on the Merits, despite the fact that the electronic link provided by the Commission does not come from an official web site of Argentina. 48 Cf. Special appeal filed on March 13, 1995 by the defense attorney of Oscar Alberto Mohamed against the judgment issued on February 22,1995 by the First Chamber of the National Chamber of Appeals for Criminal and Correctional Matters (evidence file to facilitate adjudication presented by the State on July 23 and 30 and August 10, 2012, pages 330 and 344). 17