process, it does not represent a limitation to the Court’s powers to determine the facts of the case, based on the evidence presented, on supervening facts, on complementary and contextual information in the file, as well as commonly or publicly known facts that the Court deems relevant to include in the set of said facts.” 7 14. The contextual inclusion of subsequent facts is not unique to this Court’s practice and case law, but rather it is common in all punitive proceedings, where they are usually called supervening facts. Even in the most rigid of these processes, the criminal process itself, they are admitted after the sentence, although by the exceptional route of extraordinary review, since in this matter they give up nothing less than the principle of intangibility of res judicata. This Court has ordered the incorporation of supervening facts to a criminal proceeding by ordering a State to review the irrational res judicata surrounding them. 8 15. Even less acceptable is the thesis that the Court would only be allowed to incorporate into the context of each case the data provided by the Inter-American Commission, given that it plays the accusatory role in its courts of law. 16. Although the prosecution defines and closes the matter to be judged, this does not limit the assessment of the circumstances in which it is immersed, fundamentally because these may well benefit the defense. 17. In all punitive proceedings, the rule according to which the accusation specifies and delimits the accusation, constitutes a guarantee for the accused, since it specifies the terms within which to articulate their defense, but in no way can this guarantee be perversely reversed to the detriment of that defense, depriving them of pleading and proving before the Court the circumstances before and after the fact, that is, their reality. 18. It would not be logically or legally admissible that, in any matter to be tried, it is intended that the specification made by the prosecution as a guarantee that they will be tried for that fact and not another, deprives the accused of the right to allege prior or subsequent circumstances that prove the non-existence of the fact, their non-involvement in it or even some cause of justification or exculpation (provocation, aggression, necessity, etc.). II.2. Preliminary facts II.2.a. The popular referendum and the decision of this Court in 2018 9 19. Understanding the context in the manner presented, which is none other than that which is consistent throughout the Court's case law, it is possible to verify that, in the context of this case, there are significant prior facts that are highly relevant to the adoption of the decision and that refer to previous decisions of this very Court. 20. The most important of these is the decision by the Court majority in 2018, an occasion on which it did not grant the provisional measures requested by the Commission in order to suspend the dismissal of three members of Ecuador’s Council of Citizen Participation and Social Control, taking into account that body‘s very important powers in accordance with the State Constitution. 7 Cf. Case of the Mapiripán Massacre v. Colombia. Merits, Reparations and Costs. Judgment of September 15, 2005. Series C No. 134, par. 58. 8 Cf. Case of Acosta et al. v. Nicaragua, supra, par. 155 a 169. Cf. Matter of Edwin Leonardo Jarrín, Tania Elizabeth Pauker Cueva and Sonia Gabriela Vera García, Request for Provisional Measures regarding Ecuador, of February 8, 2018. Opinion of Judge Zaffaroni. 9 3