32 As regards the statements of the [… police] investigators and the witnesses Gaspar Xep Castro, Amanda Pelén Hernández and Walter Anibal Choc Teni, they are not considered in the evaluation of the evidence as they are irrelevant. j. Appeal for reversal before the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice of Guatemala 120. The Office of the Attorney General presented an appeal for reversal of the judgment of the Fourth Chamber of the Court of Appeal, adducing the following: a) that Article 28 of the Guatemalan Constitution which embodies the constitutional right of petition had been violated, as the “order requiring additional steps to be taken” had not been issued so as to produce the evidence requested by the Office of the Attorney-General himself; b) that by omitting to issue the “order requiring additional steps to be taken”, Article 746.III of the Criminal Procedural Code, which establishes the admissibility of the appeal for reversal when some element of evidence that could influence the decision of first instance and first appeal has been rejected, had also been violated; and c) that the Fourth Chamber of the Court of Appeal incurred in an error of fact in evaluating the evidence when it failed to evaluate the following: 1) personal identification of the defendant Néstor Fonseca López by Gustavo Adolfo Cóncaba Cisneros; 2) judicial photographic identification of this defendant by Julia Griselda Ramírez López; 3) contradictory official communications from the National Police Force: one indicating that the defendant Samuel Rocael Valdez Zúñiga had been assigned the 24-hour shift that commenced at 12.00 on June 24, 1990, and that he had therefore gone off duty on June 25, 1990, at the same time, and another, indicating that he had gone off duty at 8.00 on June 25; 4) judicial statements of the police officials who investigated the facts on court orders that were rejected by the Fourth Chamber of the Court of Appeal as “irrelevant”; and 5) reports of the police investigations ordered by the courts. 121. The Supreme Court confirmed the judgment of the Fourth Chamber of the Court of Appeal, maintaining the following, inter alia: a) that “the order requiring additional steps to be taken is a discretional faculty that the legislator grants the judge so that [...] when he delivers judgment, [he may, if] he considers necessary[,] take some steps to help him decide on the fact investigated”; b) that Article 643 of the Criminal Procedural Code does not stipulate that personal identification is an autonomous element of evidence but rather an accessory to testimony and that, as the testimonial statement of the person who performed it was rejected, the validity of the identification was affected; c) that the test of reconstructing criminal acts was ordered by the competent judicial authority but it was not carried out because “the accused were not presented”; and d) that there was no error of fact in the evaluation of the testimonies that were qualified as irrelevant, the ballistic test and the official communications of the National Police Force, “because there was no evaluative omission [and] no tergiversation of the content of those probatory measures [… which only occurs] when the judge says the contrary to what the evidence proves, when evaluating the evidence”. VIII VIOLATION OF ARTICLE 7 (Right to Personal Liberty) 122. In the application, the Commission alleges that Article 7 of the Convention has been violated since Henry Giovanni Contreras, Federico Clemente Figueroa

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