20
and said actions must not only be supported by the highest authorities,
but there should be the strictest of diligences regarding protection of
any authority against harassment, punishments, or any other type of
intimidation or court order related with the acts addressed to promote
the execution of the Tribunal’s judgments. The Court will refer to this
matter again when analyzing the alleged harassment against the
prosecutors who have impelled the present case (infra Considering
Clause 58).
2.3. Deliberation between the guarantee of ne bis in idem and
the victims’ rights, with regard to the compliance of the
obligations to investigate in the present case
Meanwhile, one of the inherent objectives of criminal
investigations is to generate consequences on the rights of those
accused of committing serious human rights violations. In this sense,
the Court does not disregard, in the present case, the decision made by
the Constitutionality Court concerning a recourse of amparo filed by a
defendant to protect his rights, among them, the right to not be
prosecuted twice for the same facts. This is an important guarantee in a
democratic society. Therefore, a new deliberation should be convened
regarding the criminal guarantees invoked to prevent the full
applicability of the order to investigate issued by the Court vis-à-vis the
rights of the victims of serious violations of human rights such as the
present.
41.
In this regard, one of the developments of the principle of legal
certainty is constituted by creations such as res judicata, which allows
judicial proceedings to solve conflicts by helping to put an end to
controversies. The value of res judicata is even greater in criminal law in
order to avoid a disproportionate exercise of the State’s punitive power,
by means of prosecuting the same defendant over and over for the
same facts for which he has already been prosecuted. However, it is
possible to set limits to the right to ne bis in idem in order to develop
other values and rights that, in certain cases, could be more important.
42.
To determine the extent to which these criminal guarantees are
restricted, it is convenient to distinguish between punishable acts in
general and grave violations of human rights. With regard to punishable
acts in general, which do not involve grave violations of human rights,
43.