7 30. Under some trial systems, investigations are beyond the scope of the judicial authority and may be extremely prolonged while the investigator satisfies the legal requirements for filing the case before the jurisdictional body. In others, the investigation and trial have different stages, each of which has its own implications and characteristics; all of them carried out by different authorities. At other times, it may be the judge himself who conducts the investigation, although he must forward the results to the Attorney General’s Office (Ministerio Público) to a judge with the appropriate competence for prosecution and, when applicable, sentencing. All of this influences the time that an individual is retained by the authority that hears – lato sensu – his case and, thus, the time within which the rights and obligations are defined, which is what really interests and affects the individual, above and beyond the technical aspects of the proceedings. 31. In my said opinion in López Alvarez v. Honduras, I referred to this problem in the terms that I now reproduce and confirm: “In this respect, the definition (namely, the beginning and end of the time period) is essential when we are confronted by different juridical systems with distinct procedural and judicial structures that are also subject to Convention provisions and must apply the criteria of reasonable time.” 32. “In my opinion, the objective of the international human rights system is to ensure that the harm of individual rights, owing to the action or omission of the State, should not be prolonged without justification until it gives rise to a situation of legal uncertainty, inequity or injustice. The solution of this problem calls for a clarification through case law that can be used with different procedural systems” (para. 38). 33. I consider that the reasonable time for satisfying the right to justice cannot be conditioned by the mechanisms inherent in each procedural system, so that each one arrives at different and possibly misleading conclusions on the effective observance of the same right. Inequity lurks behind such mechanisms. The point is that the State authorities that (according to the procedural system adopted by the State) participate in the actions leading to the solution of a dispute should respect an acceptable rhythm – diligent, reasonable, adequate and pertinent, without disregarding the import of the circumstances. 34. Whether the process is divided up among diverse authorities or concentrated in a single body, whether, during the course of the proceedings, partial decisions (such as commitment to trial, when charges have been filed) are issued immediately after the accused has been investigated or when the victim files a complaint, or a long time after either of these moments, none of this should alter, deviate or conceal the requirement that a case should be resolved within a reasonable time from the occurrence of the facts that gave rise to the proceedings. 35. The first official act that affects the rights of the individual is the point of reference to calculate the reasonable time, measure its duration, compare it with the characteristics of the issue and the reasonable diligence of the State, and assess compliance or non-compliance with the judicial guarantee of reasonable time. The case law of the Inter-American Court has ruled on this recently. Hence, it is sufficient that the individual is affected in this way for attention to be paid to assessing the reasonable time, even though, technically, the harm does not occur within the criminal “proceedings,” but within a criminal “procedure.” For the effects of the