DISSENTING OPINION OF
JUDGE FERNANDO VIDAL-RAMíREZ
I dissent from the decision adopted in the judgment that dismisses the preliminary
objections interposed by the agent of the Government of Peru for reasons which I
will now explain.
1.
The period of six months provided for in Article 46(b) of the American
Convention had expired when the petition was lodged with the Commission.
1.1.
The judgment that terminated the proceedings in the military jurisdiction
was rendered on September 24, 1993, acquitting citizen Luis Alberto CantoralBenavides of the crime of treason against the fatherland and declining to try him
for the crime of terrorism, because that crime fell to the regular jurisdiction.
This judgment declared null the judgment revised in the lower court that ordered
the immediate release of citizen Cantoral-Benavides, and for that reason the case
was removed to the regular jurisdiction.
1.2.
The writ of review interposed by citizen Cantoral-Benavides before the
Supreme Court of Justice of the Republic of Peru, dated October 22, 1993, is an
extraordinary remedy, not preclusive, which according to the Peruvian Code of
Criminal Procedure may be interposed without a deadline and at any time. It does
not have the potential or legal effectiveness to be considered as a remedy of
exhaustion of the domestic jurisdiction.
The norms that regulate the writ of review exhaustively list the grounds that can
support it, as an extraordinary means of challenge, since it is directed against a
final judgment which had acquired such authority and would result in the revision
of the very basis of that judgment because of new facts and circumstances. It is
decided by the plenary Supreme Court.
Although neither the resolution of the Supreme Court that decided the
inadmissibility of the writ nor the writ itself are in the file, I accept the certainty of
its filing from the statements of the parties and insist that this remedy does not
have the potential nor the effectiveness to interrupt the running of the time period
before lapse, as it is a remedy limited to convictions for crime, since its culmination
is the elimination of the mistake in the judgment that put an end to the criminal
proceedings, as a means of correcting said mistake.
1.3.
Consequently, even though it is accepted that the stated writ of review was
interposed, the time period was not interrupted.
Thus, from September 24, 1993, the date of the judgment of the Supreme Court of
Military Justice, to April 18, 1994, the date of the complaint before the InterAmerican Commission, more than the six months set forth in Article 46(b) of the
American Convention had elapsed, and the dispositions of Article 46 were not
applicable inasmuch as citizen Cantoral-Benavides was already subjected to the
regular jurisdiction, and he had access to the remedies of the domestic jurisdiction
which had been initiated by means of a writ of habeas corpus which was declared
inadmissible.
2.
The remedies of the domestic jurisdiction have not been exhausted.