112. The Court also notes that, following the facts of the instant case, the State made an effort to guarantee and adapt the notification mechanisms of the right to consular assistance and that, by Circular 136-2012, judges, the Public Prosecution Service, the Public Defense Service, and the Judicial Investigation Department were informed of the case law criterion and the appropriate procedure when foreign nationals were deprived of liberty and how they should be notified of the right to receive consular assistance.149 113. Based on the above, the Court concludes that the State is not responsible for the violation of the rights to personal liberty and to judicial guarantees, in particular the right to information on, and effective access to, consular assistance established in Articles 7(4), and 8(2) of the American Convention, in relation to Article 1(1) of this instrument, to the detriment of Scot Cochran. VII-2 RIGHT TO JUDICIAL GUARANTEES, IN PARTICULAR AN IMPARTIAL JUDGE,150 IN RELATION TO THE OBLIGATIONS TO RESPECT AND TO ENSURE RIGHTS151 A. Arguments of the parties and observations of the Commission 114. The Commission determined that it had no evidence that would allow it to argue that Scot Cochran’s right to be heard by an impartial judge had been violated.152 115. The representatives indicated that, on analyzing the criminal proceedings, they had verified that one of the judges who was a member of the trial court violated the guarantee of impartiality by failing to disqualify himself from the case. They argued that LGBG, as a judge of the Criminal Court of the First Circuit had issued Ruling 253-03 of August 11, 2003, deciding the appeal filed by the technical defense against the pre-trial detention. The same judge had subsequently been a member of the court that delivered Ruling 851-04 of August 17, 2004, convicting Scot Cochran. They therefore considered that “he had already advanced his opinion on the same case only one year previously.” Consequently, they asked the Court to declare the violation of Article 8(1), in relation to Article 1(1) of the American Convention. 116. The State endorsed the arguments presented by the Commission in the Admissibility and Merits Report, and insisted that the precautionary measure did not Cf. Superior Council of the Judicature. Circular No. 36-2012: Sobre el Recurso de Hábeas Corpus No. 12-008371-0007-CO, y Sentencia de la Sala Constitucional No. 2012009170 (evidence file, folio 7482) 149 150 Article 8(1) of the American Convention. 151 Article 1(1) of the American Convention. The Commission indicated that the dispute stemmed from the intervention of a judge at the investigation stage who was subsequently also a member of the trial court that found Scot Cochran criminally responsible. In the Commission’s opinion, the analysis made when determining pre-trial detention differs from that required to convict a person; therefore, it did not find that Judge LGBG had prejudged the matter in any way in the ruling of August 11, 2003. It considered that he merely found proved that, based on the progress made in the criminal investigation at that date, there was a positive probability, although not a certainty, that Scot Cochran was responsible for the crimes of which he was accused. The Commission also indicated that the judgment of August 17, 2004, was delivered unanimously by the three members of the Criminal Trial Court of the First Judicial Circuit of San José. Thus, both the result of the oral trial, and the petitioner’s deprivation of liberty as a result of this, were not exclusively due to the actions of Judge LGBG. The decision depended on the opinion of three judges, two of whom had had no prior participation in the criminal proceedings against Scot Cochran, and whose impartiality was not questioned by the petitioner. The Commission added that the petitioner had not proved that he had used the procedural mechanism to challenge judges established in articles 57 to 61 of the Costa Rican Code of Criminal Procedure in force at the time of the facts. 152 33