47. In the instant case, the petitioners claim that with the transfer of the case from civilian to military jurisdiction the domestic law of the State failed to afford legal due process to protect the abridged rights and that there was a denial of justice as the State sought to make progress in the proceeding dependent on the initiative of the victim’s next of kin and, in spite of their being impoverished rural farmers, to make it necessary for them to travel to the nearest military court 30 hours away to register as third-party plaintiffs with the Public Prosecution Service if they wanted to receive information. Based on the foregoing, the petitioners consider that they are exempt from the requirement to exhaust domestic remedies, in keeping with the exceptions set forth at Article 46 (a) and (b). 48. For its part, the State maintains that the petitioners’ complaint must be ruled inadmissible since Mirey Trueba’s family filed no remedies whatsoever against the resolution that decided the appeal lodged before the Supreme Military Court whereby infantry Lt. Col. Luis Raúl Morales Rodríguez’s sentence was reduced, with which the judgment became finalized as res judicata. The State claims that the petitioners seek the review of decisions reached by the domestic courts: in other words, for the IACHR to serve as a fourth instance. 49. The Commission notes that the record shows that the Military Prosecution Service began preliminary investigation 5ZM/499 on August 22, 1998, and that, in a decision dated August 24, 1998, that same service filed criminal charges against Lt. Col. (Infantry) Luis Raúl Morales Rodríguez. On August 30, 1998, the Public Prosecution Service declined jurisdiction in the matter and transferred the case file to the military court in Mazatlán, Sinaloa, which then opened criminal proceeding 3979/98. On September 2, 1998, the National Human Rights Commission opened case Fed. 032/98 and decided on November 30, 1998, that it lacked jurisdiction in the matter since the alleged perpetrator was being tried by a military tribunal and that the family should register as third-party plaintiffs in the proceeding. Lt. Col. Morales Rodríguez was tried by a court martial and, on September 22, 1998, sentenced by a military judge attached to the 3rd Military Region to eight years in prison and exclusion from any position in the Army for the same period. The convicted man appealed the decision and, on January 19, 2001, the Supreme Military Court reduced his sentence to 1 year, 11 months, and 15 days in prison, ruling that it was a case of homicide through misadventure. In other words, in the case at hand the regular justice system did not consider itself competent and therefore transferred the case to the military courts, which investigated, tried, and convicted the member of the armed forces who caused Mirey Trueba’s death. 50. With regard to the use of military courts to try members of the armed forces suspected of offenses, the Commission has on repeated occasions 12