22 mentioned Criminal Procedural Code, according to which it was only admissible to submit someone to personal identification when this occurred at the beginning of the investigation, but not should he be arrested subsequently. According to this reasoning, the fugitive from justice would be in a better position than the person who surrendered to the proceeding. He affirmed that the judge had disqualified a great many testimonies because of his partiality, determining disqualification with dogmatic affirmations, in violation of his obligation to justify his opinions. As examples of this, he mentioned that the judge rejected witnesses for the sole reason that they were the victims’ mothers and this procedure did not correspond to Guatemalan law. In this respect, he stated that “there [were] precedents in Guatemala, among them the Mack case - a fairly well-known case with similar characteristics - where State agents are accused of killing someone [… and] there is absolutely no objection to the denouncer or to the mother [of the victim]” although they did not have direct knowledge of the events. He concluded, therefore, that in the case before the Third Criminal Sentencing Court “the court [… abused] the use of objections to eliminate all the relevant evidence that had been accumulated, despite the flaws in the investigation”. He mentioned that the court also rejected the testimony of Bruce Harris, because he was the Director of Casa Alianza and other testimonies because they were not relevant; the court only considered the testimonies of those persons who were present at the instant when the shot that produced the death of the victim was fired. Finally, with regard to the ballistic report, he established that the homicide bullet was fired by the revolver belonging to Samuel Rocael Valdez Zúñiga; despite this the judge disqualified the report because this man went off duty at 8.00 p.m. that day. He stated that the judge did not evaluate the police reports, contrary to an express rule of the Code; he did not take into account the threats against several witnesses, which could have influenced their statements, and he did not order any measure to protect them. He asserted, for example, that the judge should have observed the incoherence of the statement of Julia Griselda Ramírez López, who had identified Fonseca López in photographs but could not do so during the personal identification procedure. On that occasion, she did not identify her colleague at work either and, in the face of this contradiction, the judge should have questioned Mrs. Ramírez López to find out whether she had been threatened owing to her participation in the proceeding. He observed that proceedings under the appellate procedure and before the Supreme Court confirmed the first instance judgment on the basis of the same dogmatic arguments. He stated that a new proceeding on the complaints of torture, although not on the homicides, owing to the existence of res judicata. He indicated that, from the evidence produced, the responsibility of Samuel Rocael Valdez Zúñiga and Néstor Fonseca López could have been established for the death of Anstraum Aman Villagrán Morales, but not for the youths who were murdered in the San Nicolás Woods and that, with regard to Rosa Trinidad Morales Pérez, the elements of proof were insufficient to justify a conviction.