49 same time, the victim has a direct right to receive protection and judicial remedy”. In the Commission’s opinion, the State did not comply with these obligations or respect these rights in the instant case. 200. First, with regard to the violation of Article 25, the Commission believes that “[t]he judicial investigation was conducted in an arbitrary manner”, and observes that “the judicial authorities in charge of the case omitted or refused to perform many decisive and obvious investigative tasks”, in both the first and subsequent instances. 201. Second, regarding Article 8.1, the Commission considered that “the [Third] Sentencing Court failed to take into account or evaluate a significant part of the evidence that had been submitted to [it], or refused to do so, [… ] causing a substantial and additional denial of justice”. 202. The Commission stated that “[i]t is not the function of the supervisory bodies of the inter-American human rights system to offer a sort of judicial appeal instance or a place for judicial review of judgments delivered by national courts”, rather “[t]he work of the Court is to determine if the procedures have been fair when taken as a whole, including the way evidence has been obtained”. In this case, the Commission found that they had not been. 203. Third, and with regard to both Article 25 and Article 8 of the Convention, the Commission stated that the court totally rejected the statements of Matilde Reyna Morales García, Ana María Contreras and Rosa Carlota Sandoval, based exclusively on the fact that they were the mothers of three of the victims. In this respect, the Commission concluded that “[a]n interpretation of the law such as the one applied in this case, which prevents the courts per se from accepting and evaluating the testimony of members of the victims’ families, is a violation by the State of the right of such persons to be heard and have access to justice”. 204. When referring to the violation of Article 1.1, the Commission considered “[t]hat as a result of the judgments in the domestic judicial proceedings, the members of the victims’ families were denied their right to know and understand the truth [... and] the rights that they endeavored to revindicate through the courts”. Furthermore, it added that “due to defects in the [… proceeding], no responsibility has been determined with regard to the criminal charges” and “the families of the victims continue to be denied their right to receive civil compensation” in accordance with Articles 25 and 8 of the Convention. 205. When answering the application, the State alleged that the Commission exceeded the framework of the American Convention when it referred the case to the Court because the Supreme Court, which is the paramount judicial authority of Guatemala, had issued a decision, the merits of which could not be discussed. In this respect, it affirmed that “[b]y virtue of its obligation to accept court judgments, the State does not have the legal faculty to enter into discussions on the merits of the matter [because] this would constitute interference of one power of the State in another” (supra, para. 49). 206. On the same point, the State stressed that “[a] negative result to a procedural claim is not an act that implies the violation of the rights guaranteed [by] the Convention” and that “[p]rocedural principles of immediacy in collecting evidence ensure that the domestic jurisdictions are able to evaluate [such evidence] directly”.