10 of the Criminal Code. E) Pardon 39. Finally, the Court has dealt with the matter of pardon, appeal to which the accused convicted to death must have access, in the terms of Article 4 of the American Convention. Obviously, to have the right to present this appeal does not necessarily mean the right to a favourable response. The pardon is gradually being removed from criminal legislation. In it we still find the remote power of pardon of the absolute monarch, lord of lives and estates, who precisely because of that could dispose of the life of the accused, saving him from the death ordered by the court. The criminal rationality, found in the political and judicial rationality, suggests that this figure should be eliminated, without this preventing the establishment, in its place, of appropriate substitutes that allow the conversion of the punishment imposed when there are causes that justify it. 40. The Court appreciates that the State lacks a certain and adequate regimen regarding the pardon. If this subsists, a matter that concerns a State decision, it must not be extent of precise rules regarding the authority called to grant it, the grounds for its granting, and the procedure to decide on it. On the contrary, it would be an expression of pure discretion, foreign to a Constitutional State in a democratic society. Even when it is a power to pardon, it is necessary that it be exercised with clarity and rationality. Sergio García Ramírez Judge Pablo Saavedra Alessandri Secretary