30 assessment of the evidence made by the trial judge, and his classification of the crime and the participation of the defendants in the unlawful act, merely amending the reference to civil responsibility in order to sentence the accused to pay a sum of money to the child’s legal heirs. 116. That said, to rule on the effectiveness of the special remedy of appeal filed by the defendants in the criminal proceedings, the Court must analyze whether, as the representatives argue, according to the brief contesting the judgment, “the judges in all the instances failed to conduct a comprehensive examination of the contested decisions, because they did not observe the existence of violations of human rights and, especially, of several guarantees of due process […].” However, it should be noted that the fact that a decision issued by an appellate court does not favor the interests of the appellant or validates the decision of the lower court does not necessarily mean that it has failed to analyze certain violations due to a formal element of the remedy of appeal that detracts from its effectiveness. 117. Consequently, the Court must examine the content of both the appeal filed and the ruling handed down in order to have the elements that will provide certainty that, in this specific case, there was a violation of the right to appeal the judgment. Nevertheless, in the instant case, it takes note that the procedure followed by the appellate court consisted in making an analysis of the judgment, taking into consideration the assessment of the evidence and the law made by the trial judge. Added to this, over and above the indication included on the notification of the judgments in which the alleged victims and their representatives expressed their intention of making an oral appeal, the body of evidence does not include any brief or record that describes the violations that have been alleged by the parties in this international litigation based on which the Court could determine whether the Twelfth Chamber failed to rule on any of the claims made in the appeals against the judgment. Therefore, due either to the particularity of the oral appeal that was filed or to the absence of briefs that would allow this Court to compare the matters appeals with what was decided, the Court lacks elements to rule on the alleged violation of the right to appeal the judgment before a higher judge or court established in Article 8(2)(h) of the American Convention. B.3. Public nature of the criminal proceedings 118. Lastly, the representatives asked the Court to declare that the State was responsible for the violation of the right to public proceedings recognized in Article 8(5) of the American Convention, because the alleged victims had been tried and punished in written proceedings that violated the principles of the oral and public nature of the trial, as well as Article 8(1) of the Convention, regarding the right to be heard, in relation to Articles 1(1) and 2 of the Convention. They argued that “the criminal proceedings against Roberto Girón and Pedro Castillo Mendoza […] were conducted without an oral, public and adversarial trial, because the procedural law in force at the time of their trial did not establish this procedure, but exclusively the possibility of presenting briefs with final arguments, or the same but with the request that the proceedings be opened to evidence, pursuant to article 621110 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (Decree 52-73), which did not establish the possibility for Messrs. Girón and Castillo, in their capacity as defendants, to have the opportunity to provide statements in the presence of the judge who would sentence them.” The Commission did not allege these violations. The said article 621 established: “In the order to open the case to trial, the judge shall require that the case file be made available to the procedural subjects for five ordinary days, so that they may be aware of the actions taken and can provide final arguments or request that the proceedings be opened to evidence. If they provide final arguments and do not expressly request that a day and time for a hearing be established, or if the five days pass without them doing so, the judge shall schedule a hearing and shall deliver judgement. Cf. Code of Criminal Procedure, supra. 110