5
Concurring Opinion that I attached to the July 7, 2004 ruling on measures, in regards
to conditions prevailing in the Urso Branco prison: “It is good that there be a
penitentiary reform, that new legislation be enacted regarding this matter, that
inmates be classified, that penitentiary institutions be modernized, that the officials
who will act as guards and be responsible for sentence execution be carefully
recruited, that there be adequate alternatives to prison sentences, that visits to
prisoners take place under decent conditions, that there be medical care to protect
the inmates’ health, that schools, workshops and work units be set up. All this, and
more, is absolutely indispensable, because it reflects current standards regarding
deprivation of liberty, both preventive and penal, a measure that currently is severely
questioned. – But none of this, which must be done as soon as possible, can
substitute immediate adoption of the necessary measures to avoid a single additional
death in the Urso Branco Prison.”
V.
Right to fair trial and judicial protection
21.
In criminal Law there is concurrence of criminal offenses, which generally
entails a more severe applicable sentence. For this, an assessment of the overall
situation is the basis for a ruling. Something similar happens in human rights Law.
Rarely is there an isolated abridgment of a juridical right that is protected by a
precept of a convention. There are many examples of this in the jurisprudence of the
Inter-American Court. Abridgments are usually multiple, beginning with a single
unlawful conduct (as in the case of forced disappearance: violation of various rights,
as the Court pointed out already in its early judgments: thus, in the judgment on the
merits in the Velásquez Rodríguez case, on July 29, 1988) or, in the course of
successive facts or acts, in close succession. It is perfectly possible that during a
criminal prosecution proceeding, which may take place rapidly, there are various
violations: arbitrary detention, torture, irrational severity of preventive detention,
breaches of due process, flaws in the judgment. Nevertheless, each one has its own
specificity.
22.
Things may have been seen otherwise –but at the time there was no
protection of human rights as there is today- when there was “aggravated” capital
punishment, that is, one carried out with major use of means to carry the suffering of
the convict to the extreme. There are numerous examples: such is the case of
Damiens, referred to in the first pages of Discipline and Punish. Thus, torture was
part of punitive death, it was incorporated into this punishment, which did not
separate purgatory torment, on the one hand, and fulminating death, on the other.
Even so, it is possible to naturally establish a distinction between the suffering
inflicted and the death caused: the former violates –as we say today, in the language
of Article 5 of the American Convention- the right to humane treatment, and the
latter violates the right to life recognized in Article 4.
23.
There is, therefore, a constellation of events, with barely a break in continuity,
if it exists at all, which the judge must observe, analyze, and decide upon. This will
be the starting point for establishing the responsibility of the State and the
consequences in accordance with the violations committed. The subsequent finding
that establishes its responsibility will take this set, not only each of its parts, into
account, and the conceptual separation will not deny the relations that exist among
certain legally protected interests, the respective rights, and the events in which the
former were harmed and the latter abridged.
24.
The above can be seen in various points, and especially in the analysis of
Articles 8 (Right to Fair Trial) and 25 (Right to Judicial Protection). In both instances,
they refer to effective judicial protection, in accordance with conditions established in
the course of protracted evolution regarding this matter. Deficiencies regarding due
process (abridgments of Article 8) are combated with judicial remedies (the
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