explicit in the excerpt quoted from the judgment of acquittal in the first instance, is an investigation that adequately clarifies the facts.3 31. The Commission observes that in this case, it is the Judiciary itself that determined that after the proceeding in which three persons were tried, the investigation should continue to clarify the murder of Mr. Carvajal. Nonetheless, the State has been arguing continuously that the judicial proceeding exhausted the domestic remedies. Moreover, the State has not given any explanation of why the investigation ordered by its own courts would not be an adequate remedy for the purposes of identifying and eventually sanctioning the persons responsible for the murder of Mr. Carvajal. Accordingly, the Commission considers that the criminal investigation constitutes the adequate remedy to be exhausted, and that for the purposes of the admissibility of this petition, the judgment of April 6, 2001, did not exhaust domestic remedies in Colombia. 32. The Commission observes that the assassination of Mr. Carvajal Carvajal occurred on April 16, 1998, and that more than six years have now transpired without the investigation to determine liability for that murder having reached any conclusion. In this respect, the IACHR notes that Article 46(2)(c) of the American Convention sets forth an exception to the rule of prior exhaustion by reason of “unwarranted delay in rendering a final judgment under the aforementioned remedies.” In the Commission’s opinion, the fact that the investigation is still open without yielding any results after more than six years constitutes an unwarranted delay in the terms of Article 46(2)(c) of the Convention. 33 nvoking the exceptions to the rule of exhaustion of domestic remedies provided for in Article 46(2) of the Convention is closely tied to the determination of possible violations of certain rights contained therein, such as the guarantees of access to justice. Nonetheless, Article 46(2) of the American Convention, given its nature and purpose, has content autonomous from the substantive norms of the Convention. Therefore, determining whether the exceptions to the rule of exhaustion of domestic remedies set forth therein are applicable to the instant case comes prior to and separate from the analysis of the merits, since it depends on a different standard of appreciation from that used to determine whether there has been a violation of Articles 8 and 25 of the 3 Report No. 05/03, Petition 519/2001, Jesús María Valle Jaramillo, Annual Report of the IACHR 2003, para. 28. See also, Report No. 52/97, Case 11,218, Arges Sequeira Mangas, Annual Report of the IACHR 1997, paras. 96 and 97; Report 55/97, Case 11,137, Juan Carlos Abella, Annual Report of the IACHR 1997, para. 392; and Report 57/00, Case 12,050, La Granja, Ituango, Annual Report of the IACHR 2000, para. 40. 8