8 to the Inter-American Court, that the crime punished by the death penalty under Article 201 of the Penal Code, in accordance with Legislative Decree 17/73, in force when the Convention was ratified, is not the same crime punished with the death penalty in that Article according to Legislative Decree 81/96, used to condemn the defendant Raxcacó Reyes. 34. The facts that the State could retain as hypotheses for the application of the death penalty, without conflicting with Article 4(2), in fine, of the American Convention, constitute in reality a conjunction of two different crimes: kidnapping or abduction, on the one hand, which violates the liberty of the victim, and homicide, on the other hand, which deprives the victim of his life. The possibility and necessity of making this distinction is manifest and essential. In contrast, the act for which the accused was convicted did not entail any conjunction of crimes, but only kidnapping or abduction; that is, deprivation of liberty. Thus, if kidnapping is punished by death, without the victim having been deprived of his life, then there has been an extension of the applicability of the death penalty. Indeed, it would have been used with regard to an act for which it was not provided when the State ratified the Convention. D) PROCEDURAL MATTERS 35. The Court has declared that there has been a violation of Article 4(6), which embodies the right of every person condemned to death “to apply for amnesty, pardon, or commutation of sentence, which may be granted in all cases.” On this point, I consider that there has been a concurrence of rights deriving from the application or applicability of the death penalty, on the one hand, and rights inherent in due process of law during the procedural stage subsequent to the guilty verdict, on the other hand. The recognition of a right entails, logically, the establishment of the means to make it effective, which in this case are organic and procedural: attribution of the corresponding powers to a specific organ of the State and definition of a procedure for the exercise of the recognized right so that this “may be granted.” This does not mean that the pardon or commutation of sentence must be granted, but merely that it is possible to grant it. How can this be achieved if there is no means to this end, despite the stipulation embodied in the Pact ratified by the State, which thereby assumed sovereignly the obligations established in Articles 1 and 2? 36. In the judgment that this opinion accompanies, the Court has decided, as a reparation, that “the punishment imposed should be annulled and, without the need for a new trial, another punishment should be ordered, which, under no circumstances, may be the death penalty” (para. 133). Subsequently, the same judgment indicates that “before delivering (the new) judgment, [the State] should offer the parties the opportunity to exercise their right to a hearing” (ibidem). Regarding this part of the judgment of the international court, I consider it pertinent to offer the following observations: (a) It is evident that the Inter-American Court did not rule on the guilt of the accused. This is an element which only the national criminal courts are competent to decide. Anyone who considers that the Court is conducting a criminal proceedings on the person accused of committing the crime would be incurring in error; (b) The decision of the Inter-American Court in no way obstructs the State’s response to crime in general and to a certain crime in particular; the Court itself