B.3.3 Criminal proceedings and reasonable time with regard to the death of Eduardo Landaeta 258. The Court observes that, in this case, the investigations commenced in December 1996, and were conducted under the Code of Criminal Procedure until the entry into force of the new Organic Code of Criminal Procedure on July 1, 1999. In December 2011, the three agents who had been charged were acquitted based on the absence of sufficient evidence concerning their criminal responsibility. This decision was annulled by the Appellate Court, which ordered that a new oral trial be held, and this is underway at the present time, so that the proceedings have lasted more than 17 years. Consequently, the Court will analyze the alleged existence of irregularities in the procedures implemented during the investigations and the procedural delays throughout the proceedings. B.3.3.1 Procedures and irregularities during the criminal proceedings 259. The Court notes that, in January 2000, the Second Court of the Transitional Regime received Eduardo Landaeta’s case file, owing to the entry into force of the new procedural regime (supra para. 105). The investigations were reactivated in October 2003, following more than four and a half years of procedural inactivity. In this regard, between January 2004 and 2008 a series of procedures that had initially been implemented during 1997 and 1998 were carried out or supplemented. However, the Court considers that there were some omissions during this stage of the investigation, namely: a) Prolonged lapses between the occurrence of the event and the performance or expansion of certain expert appraisals, and delays in carrying out procedures requested repeatedly by the prosecution, such as: the technical inspection of the vehicle in which Eduardo Landaeta was transferred; 338 the request for information on the weapons used by the agents who transferred him; 339 the ballistics trajectory and the trajectory of the bullets in the body (requested by the prosecutor on two occasions 340), and the photographs, the reconstruction of the incident, and the topographic survey (requested by the prosecutor on two occasions 341), which were not carried out until 2004, 2006 and 2008, respectively; b) Although the expansion of the autopsy report on May 25, 2006, 342 established the possibility that a bullet had remained in Eduardo Landaeta’s body, the omissions of the previous autopsy were not rectified (supra para. 256); c) The exhumation of the corpse on August 9, 2006, 343 according to expert witness Baraybar, was performed with “fundamental flaws” owing to the absence of a 338 Cf. Record of police technical inspection of April 16, 2004 (annexes to the answering brief, folio 7531). 339 The question of whether the weapon used by the police agents who transferred Eduardo Landaeta was 7.65 mm caliber was answered negatively. 340 Cf. Request of the prosecutor of the Transitory Procedural Regime of the state of Aragua of October 30, 2003 (annexes to the answering brief, folios 7347 and 7348), and Note No. 05-FT-MCM-2109-06 issued by the prosecutor of the Transitory Procedural Regime of the state of Aragua of April 29, 2006 (annexes to the answering brief, folio 7825). 341 Cf. Request of the prosecutor of the Transitory Procedural Regime of the state of Aragua of October 30, 2003 (annexes to the answering brief, folios 7347 and 7348), and Note No. 05-FT-0188-08 issued by the prosecutor of the Transitory Procedural Regime of the state of Aragua of April 18, 2008 (annexes to the answering brief, folios 8017 to 8021). 342 Cf. Requests to expand the autopsy report on the body of Eduardo Landaeta of May 22 and 25, 2006 (annexes to the answering brief, folios 7832 and 7833). 343 Cf. Record of the exhumation of the corpse of Eduardo Landaeta on September 28, 2006 (annexes to the answering brief, folios 7910 to 7913). 72