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could transmit with the same certainty that these acts will not be repeated and that,
if they are, the population can be sure that they will never go without punishment,
since without excuse or pretext the most exemplary of the punishments established
in the legal code in force will be imposed in order to establish a sound precedent that
banishes the temptation to repeat this type of crimes that damage social conscience.
The present is a case in which the judges that examined the case coincided that it
escapes the traditional turn of the matters submitted to the jurisdiction of this
Honorable Court, where the States appear as the accused not for procedural
violations, as in the present case, but for executing State policies that intentionally
restrict the most elemental rights of its inhabitants.
Jurisdiction of the Court
The Honorable Court is competent to know the case of merit in virtue of the
ratification made of the American Convention by the Guatemalan State on May 25,
1978 and of the acceptance of its jurisdiction on March 9, 1987.
As established in Article 62(3) of the American Convention, this Court is competent
to know of all cases concerning the interpretations and application of the provisions
of the Convention, that are submitted to it, provided that the State Party has
previously recognized the jurisdiction of the Court, situation that does not permit
doubts regarding said matter.
Despite the above, it is fair to mention that the Inter-American Commission on
Human Rights, whenever possible, must support that the Court deal with
paradigmatic cases that deal with situations that escape procedural slip-ups that
affect a single individual tried and convicted in all instances by one of the State
parties of the Convention for committing an abominable crime; to permit that this
Honorable Court deal with those paradigmatic cases in which its intervention is of
vital and urgent importance for the validity of human rights of groups of citizens that
suffer from some type of violation that distances the signing States from the
Convention, of its reason of existence as such and lead them astray from the
purposes that the Convention seeks.
Of the procedural deficiencies
This case puts in evidence regretful and relevant mistakes of some operators of
justice that committed errors not of bad faith in the process but of non-observance in
the rigorous application of the procedural rules in force, situation that in a case as
delicate as the present, whose sanction is the maximum punishment, must have
been observed with extreme thoroughness. Failure to do so resulted in the Court
having to issue a judgment against the State of Guatemala due to the procedural
records because it was evident that said procedural omissions resulted in the
violation of several of the precepts of the American Convention on Human Rights, as
expressed in the operative paragraphs of the judgment of merit.
Trying to simplify as much as possible the detail of the procedural errors in which the
different operators of justice that examined the case of merit participated, the
following can be mentioned:
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