REPORT
Nº 63/00 I.
SUMMARY 1.
On January 26, 1998, Mr. Ernst Otto Stalinski (hereinafter referred
to as “the petitioner”) presented a complaint to the Inter-American
Commission on Human Rights (hereinafter referred to as “the
Commission” or “ the IACHR”) against the Republic of Honduras
(hereinafter “the State of Honduras”, “Honduras” or “the
State”) for the violation of his rights to a fair trial (Article 8), to
judicial protection (Article 25) and to equal protection (Article 24),
which are set forth in the American Convention on Human Rights
(hereinafter “the Convention” or the “American Convention”). The
violations denounced in the complaint relate to alleged irregularities
committed by the judiciary of Honduras in the criminal proceedings
conducted against the persons accused of the attempted kidnapping of the
petitioner, which occurred on April 28, 1990, and, specifically, against
Messrs. Richard Anderson, Karl Koch and Eduardo Aragón. 2.
On the question of admissibility, the petitioner contends that his
petition is admissible because he has exhausted all domestic legal
remedies with respect to the three above-mentioned accused, who are the
only ones to whom his petition refers.
He also claims that he presented his petition within six months
from December 3, 1997, the date on which the Supreme Court of Justice of
Honduras declared the appeal for annulment lodged by him on the grounds of
violation of a law or legal doctrine to be unfounded, thereby rendering
the three appealed dismissals res
judicata. 3.
For its part, the State alleges that the petitioner has not
exhausted all domestic legal remedies, since legal actions (civil and
criminal) available under the domestic legislation of Honduras are still
being pursued and no definitive legal ruling has as yet been made to
convict or acquit any of the nine accused persons.
The State alleges, moreover, that the petition is ex
tempore, since it was not presented within six months of the date on
which the acts occurred and the State requests that the case be quashed. 4.
The Commission concludes that it is competent to consider the
petition and that the petition is admissible in conformity with Article 47
of the Convention. It also
decides to defer its decision on fulfillment of the requirements
concerning exhaustion of domestic remedies and the period of six months
provided for in Article 46(1), sub-paragraphs (a) and (b), respectively,
until such time as it rules on the merits of the alleged violation of
Articles 8 and 25 of the aforementioned international instrument. II.
PROCESSING BY THE COMMISSION
5.
On January 26, 1998, the Commission received the petitioner’s
complaint against the State of Honduras and on March 17 of that year the
process was initiated sub judice.
On April 3, 1998, the relevant parts of the petition were communicated to
the State and a period of 90 days was given to the State to reply. At the
request of the State of Honduras, the Commission granted an extension of
the aforementioned period. Honduras replied on October 13, 1998 and on
October 15 of the same year the relevant parts of this communication were
transmitted to the petitioner. 6.
On December 11, 1998, the petitioner presented his observations on
the State’s reply. On February 18, 1999, the relevant parts of these
observations were transmitted to the State, which submitted its
corresponding comments on March 19, 1999. The relevant parts of the
State’s comments were transmitted to the petitioner on April 9, 1999.
The petitioner submitted his observations on April 26, 1999 and the
relevant portions of his observations were transmitted to the State on May
13, 1999. During the extension granted by the Commission, the State sent
its comments on the petitioner’s observations. On 3 and 15 March 2000,
Mr. Stalinski sent the additional information requested by the Commission.
That same day (March 15, 2000), this information was sent to the State,
which was granted a period of 15 days to prepare its comments on the
information. No reply has been received thus far from the State of
Honduras. III.
POSITIONS OF THE PARTIES
A.
The petitioner 7.
The petitioner alleges that on Saturday, April 28, 1990, at
approximately 5.30 p.m., Messrs. Leonel Medrano Irías, Juan José Osorio
and Richard Anderson, employees of the companies Chiquita International Trading Company and Tela Railroad Company, the first headquartered in Delaware in the
state of Illinois in the United States of America and the second
headquartered in the municipality of La Lima in the Department of Cortés,
Honduras, attempted to abduct him in the Gran Hotel Sula in San Pedro Sula,
Department of Cortés, Republic of Honduras. According to the petitioner,
this criminal act was carried out with the aim of killing him to prevent
him from continuing to compete with the aforementioned companies in the
marketing of bananas, a sector in which they had maintained a total
monopoly in Honduras for more than 90 years. 8.
The petitioner alleges that on August 3, 1995, he lodged a criminal
complaint in the Third Criminal Court of the city of San Pedro Sula, in
which he accused Messrs. Robert F. Kistinger, Charles Morgan, Manuel Rodríguez,
Alejandro Backoksy or Bacoxi, Juan José Osorio, Mario Matías Galindo,
Eduardo F. Aragón, Karl Koch and Richard Anderson, as the intellectual or
material authors of the crimes against him of attempted murder, attempted
kidnapping, unlawful search of a residence, attempted illegal detention,
duress, extortion, blackmail, economic crimes and attempted terrorism.
Subsequent to the complaint, the petitioner made a formal accusation of
commission of the above-mentioned crimes to the same Court. 9.
According to the petitioner, on August 22, 1995, after the
examining magistrate had declared the charges admissible, the case was
requested ad efectum videndi by
the Supreme Court of Justice of Honduras at the request of one of the
accused. On October 25 of the
same year, the Supreme Court returned the case to the “Court from which
it originated, without comment”. The Supreme Court later again requested
the case from the lower court and on December 27, 1995 handed down a
decision that contradicted the decision of the previous October 25, in
which it had made the following observation: “The Judge who tries the
case must strictly comply with the order contained in Circular No. 05,
Item 3 of the plenary sitting of the Supreme Court held on March 20,
1991…” The abovementioned order provides that “ no person may be
detained, arrested or taken prisoner by reason of an obligation that does
not arise from a crime or minor offence: infractions that frequently occur
when criminal proceedings are instituted and an order of arrest or
detention is obtained against persons who have participated in acts or
contracts of a purely civil, commercial or administrative nature, from
which obligations naturally will arise. Failure to fulfill these
obligations, however, does not constitute a criminal act or offence, as in
the instant case.”[1]
As a consequence of this observation, the examining magistrate issued in
the first instance a ruling to suspend the enforcement of the arrest
warrant and later, on January 24, 1996, issued another ruling suspending
the criminal proceeding “until the civil action is settled by means of a
final judgment”. 10.
The petitioner requested that the decision of the Supreme Court of
December 27, 1995 be reviewed on the grounds that the order to which the
decision referred was not applicable to the specific case, since the
criminal proceeding instituted arose from acts that were purely criminal,
which had given rise to two proceedings, one criminal for the punishment
of the offenders and the other civil for reparation and compensation for
damages. 11.
On March 20, 1996, the Supreme Court issued a ruling in which it
declared the observation made on December 27, 1995 to be null and void. In
that ruling, the Court declared that “the judge of the Third Criminal
Court of San Pedro Sula, Department of Cortés, has the judicial
independence to make timely, legal and pertinent decisions in her
court…” Based on this ruling, the lower court ordered that the
criminal proceeding should go forward. 12.
The petitioner states that the accused Karl Koch, Eduardo Federico
Aragón and Richard Anderson Mena voluntarily appeared before the judge of
the Third Criminal Court of San Pedro Sula to answer the charges and
denied the accusations. The first two were immediately released while Mr.
Anderson remained in detention for the period allowed by the law for an
investigation to be conducted (six days) and then was released on bail.
The petitioner adds that on November 5, 1996, the abovementioned judge
issued a ruling in which she dismissed the proceeding against the three
accused persons and absolved them of criminal responsibility on the
grounds that throughout the investigations no evidence had been brought to
prove their participation in the crimes of which they were accused. 13.
The complainant alleges that he appealed this decision to the Court
of Appeals of San Pedro Sula, which, on February 28, 1997, after
reformulating the grounds for its ruling to include the crime of attempted
terrorism, confirmed the operative part of the ruling and, consequently,
the dismissal of the proceeding against Messrs. Koch, Aragón and
Anderson. The petitioner filed an appeal against this decision as flawed[2]
in form claiming that the Court had overlooked the fact that the
dismissals that were the subject of the appeal were not based on proven
grounds, despite the fact that the laws of Honduras provide that such
dismissals must meet the requirements for final judgments to be handed
down.[3]
The petitioner also filed an appeal for review of the aforementioned
decision of the Court of Appeal of San Pedro Sula on the grounds of
contravention of the law or legal doctrine, alleging that the statements
of eyewitnesses to the acts had been ignored. 14.
On August 27, 1997, the Supreme Court of Justice declared unfounded
the appeal for review on account of violation of procedural rules filed by
the petitioner against the judgment of the Court of Appeals of San Pedro
Sula, because “appeals can only be filed against final judgments and not
against court orders.” The
Supreme Court ruled that the appeal for violation of a law or legal
doctrine could go forward, but also declared that appeal inadmissible in
its two statements of grounds issued on December 3, 1997. 15.
The complainant alleges that a series of irregularities were
committed during the course of the trial and that his right to a fair
trial with minimum guarantees of due process was violated. He notes among
these irregularities that during the trial he presented documentary
evidence and the testimony of witnesses but that the examining magistrate
took no steps whatsoever to review this evidence, thereby disregarding the
principle applicable under the laws of Honduras that a court may initiate
action (principio inquisitivo).
According to the petitioner, the judge in question simply included in the
proceedings the depositions which the eyewitnesses had made before a
notary public, without examining their relationship to the facts of the
case, despite the fact that–according to the petitioner–these
statements had been made and ratified by said witnesses before the
examining magistrate. Given these circumstances, the petitioner considers
that the judicial remedies were neither effective nor adequate to protect
the rights that had been violated, since he had been denied the right to
real and effective defense, because the evidence he presented during the
criminal trial had been neither admitted nor assessed. The petitioner
further alleges that during the proceedings the legal deadlines or time
limits were not respected and that the courts of Honduras issued rulings
after the expiration of the applicable time limits. 16.
Among the irregularities alleged to have been committed, the
petitioner mentions that documents were tampered with during the
proceedings, and that pages were even inserted in the file of the case,
which led him to file a complaint before the Inspectorate of Courts and
Tribunals against the Judge of the Third Criminal Court of San Pedro Sula,
Judge Linda Patricia Reyes, who heard the case, copies of which are
included in the file being considered by the IACHR. According to the
petitioner, the aforementioned Judge attempted to backdate her ruling to
prevent his attorney from filing the ordinary appeals on time. In this
connection, the petitioner states that on October 28, 1996 he lodged a
complaint about irregular acts and falsification of documents with the
Coordinator of Prosecutors of the Office of the Attorney General. In that
complaint, he requested that preliminary proceedings for judicial
misconduct be initiated against the aforementioned Judge for, inter alia, having allegedly ordered a dismissal of proceedings, in
which Mr. Karl Koch was acquitted and exonerated of all charges, to be
drawn up, backdated and inserted between folios 914 and 915 in the
judicial file, where the petitioner claims he found it. According to the
complaint, the Judicial Inspector took a statement from clerk No. III, who
had custody of the file and who declared that on October 24, 1996 the
Judge and the Secretary of the Court had ordered her to type the said
dismissal and to backdate it to September 20, 1996. The petitioner states
that the authorities have done nothing to investigate the irregularities
in respect of which the complaint was lodged. 17.
With regard to the State’s submission that documents in the file
on the case show that on April 28, 1990 (the date on which the acts with
which the case is concerned took place) the competent authorities tried to
execute a warrant for the arrest of the petitioner, the petitioner claims
that the file contained no warrant for his arrest and that the police
authority that would have had to execute such a warrant in Puerto Cortés
stated that the warrant was not in its files. In this regard, the
complainant submitted a statement signed by the Sectional Delegate of the
Public Security Force of Puerto Cortés, declaring: That
he had carefully searched in the files of this Delegation and had found no
record of any warrant for the arrest or detention of Mr. Ernst Otto
Stalinski issued by the District Court of this city of Puerto Cortés
during the month of April 1990. 18.
With regard to the argument by the State that the case is a single
one and that action is still proceeding against six of the nine accused,
which means that domestic remedies had not yet been exhausted, the
petitioner stated that: When
the ruling of dismissal was handed down with the force of a final judgment
in respect of Eduardo F. Aragón, Richard Anderson, and Karl Koch, the
examining magistrate instructed that testimony be closed in the case in
order to proceed separately against the other accused, which goes to show
that the case was not a single one, as the State alleges. 19.
The State affirms that the Examining Magistrate conducted the
proceedings against the other six accused as a special subdivision of the
case and that on January 14, 1999 he had dismissed the proceedings against
Manuel Rodríguez, Alejandro Andrés Bacoxi and Juan José Osorio,
absolving them of all criminal responsibility. The petitioner filed an
appeal against this decision with the Court of Appeals of the city of San
Pedro Sula, in Cortés, which confirmed the dismissals based on the
background information used to dismiss the proceeding against Messrs.
Richard Anderson, Karl Koch and Eduardo Aragón. The petitioner added that
he did not file an appeal for review on the grounds of violation of
procedural rules or infraction of the law because, since the facts of the
case and the law were the same, he knew beforehand that the result would
be the same as that regarding the other three accused. 20.
In its statement of reply, the State contended that in its domestic
jurisdiction an ordinary proceeding was still pending in which Mr.
Stalinski was claiming damages and prejudice suffered from the same
kidnapping attempt and other acts allegedly committed against him by
various employees of the companies Chiquita
International Trading Company and Tela
Railroad Company. In this regard, the petitioner states that the
criminal action instituted by him arose from acts that were purely
criminal in nature, which gave rise to two legal actions, one criminal to
punish the perpetrators and the other civil for reparation and
compensation for damages, and that, in any case, no progress has been made
in the civil case for the past four years because the companies accused
have not responded to the complaint, which itself constitutes a violation
of his human rights. 21.
On March 11, 2000, the petitioner, at the request of the
Commission, sent a copy of the decision of the Third Criminal Court of San
Pedro Sula, of January 14, 1999, dismissing the case against Messrs.
Manuel Rodríguez Escalera, Alejandro Bacoxi, Juan José Osorio and Robert
Francis Kistinger. He also sent a “judgment” of the Court of Appeals
of San Pedro Sula, of August 11, 1999, in which the appeal filed by the
petitioner against the dismissal of January 14, 1999 was declared to be
inadmissible, since “ in the preliminary stage of Court proceedings, it
was not established with certainty that the accused were the authors of
the crime in question.” That decision confirmed the dismissal that was the subject of
the appeal and provided that “the parties be notified of this judgment”
and that the matter be returned to the court whence it originated for such
legal action as may be required. (Underlining not in the original). 22.
On March 29, 2000, also responding to a request from the
Commission, the petitioner sent a statement from the Third Criminal Court
of the First Instance, of March 28, of the same year, which summarized the
current state of the criminal proceeding against Messrs. Charles Morgan
and Mario Matías Galindo, the two remaining accused persons. In this
regard, the Court declared that the aforementioned accused “had not
presented themselves voluntarily before this court, and are therefore
fugitives from justice and that no dismissal of the proceeding had been
decided in their favor.” 23.
Without prejudice to the provision of this information requested by
the Commission, the petitioner stressed that the complaint presented by
him to the IACHR against the State of Honduras refers to “violations
committed by the authorities of that country through the judicial branch
which, on December 3, 1997, rejected the appeal for review on the grounds
of infraction of the law or legal doctrine of the final judgment of March
3, 1997 handed down by the Court of Appeal of San Pedro Sula, Cortés,
which had heard specifically the case of the dismissals handed down in
favor of Richard Anderson, Karl Koch and Eduardo Aragón”. “This case
was definitively concluded when the Honorable Supreme Court of Justice
handed down on the above-mentioned date its decision on the
appeal for review …” 24.
Based on the foregoing, the petitioner states that the State of
Honduras violated, inter alia,
the right to a fair trial and the right to judicial protection (Articles
8(1) and 25 of the American Convention), as well as the right to equal
protection of the law without discrimination (Article 24) of the
aforementioned international instrument. B.
The State
25.
With regard to the facts, the State alleged in summary that on
April 28, 1990 a group of persons came to the Gran Hotel Sula of San Pedro
Sula, including the attorney Leonel Medrano Irías, some of them wearing
police uniforms, and asked for Mr. Stalinski. The group, accompanied by
Mr. Marcos Muñoz, manager of the hotel, then went up to the
petitioner’s room, but did not find him there. The attorney Medrano Irías
said that there was a warrant of arrest out for Mr. Stalinski. 26.
The State declared that it was stated in the court documents that
the District Court of Puerto Cortés had issued a warrant on April 27,
1990 for the arrest of Mr. Stalinksi, who was accused of the crime of
disobedience of the authorities, that the warrant was processed through
the appropriate police authority, and that on the day of the events an
effort was being made to execute the warrant. 27.
On the question of admissibility, the State of Honduras contended
in the initial stages of the proceeding that Mr. Stalinski had not
exhausted all domestic remedies, since the judicial actions–civil and
criminal–instituted by him against the accused were still pending.
With regard to the criminal action, the State declared, inter
alia, that of the nine persons who were accused in the same case,
three of them were acquitted by dismissal of the proceedings against them
because the court had found that “they were not involved in the acts of
which they were accused”. Mr. Stalinski filed an appeal against these
dismissals. Subsequently, when the Court of Appeals confirmed the decision
of the lower court, the petitioner filed two appeals for review, which
were dismissed on both procedural and substantive grounds. 28.
The State contended that after the appeal for review on the ground
of infraction of the law or legal doctrine had been declared inadmissible,
the case had returned to the Third Criminal Court of San Pedro Sula, where
the proceeding is taking its normal course. Thus, on July 30, 1998, the
same court had ruled that the other three accused persons should be
conditionally released, namely, Messrs. Juan José Osorio Acuña,
Alejandro Andrés Bacoxi and Manuel Rodríguez Escalera. At the same time,
it had stated that a final judgment had not yet been handed down to
convict or acquit the nine accused and that the petitioner could file the
corresponding appeals and requests for review against this final judgment,
when it was handed down. Since
this criminal proceeding was initiated as a single action, in the same
case, by the same accuser, for the same crimes, against various accused
persons (9), it seems improper to us that the petitioner, Mr. Ernst Otto
Stalinski, should attempt to surprise the Honorable Inter-American
Commission by presenting appeals in respect of three (3) of the nine (9)
accused, as if he had exhausted all the remedies available under the
domestic jurisdiction of the State of Honduras. 29.
With regard to the civil action, the State alleged that an ordinary
lawsuit for damages, loss of earnings, indirect damages, and moral
prejudice was still pending, which had been filed on October 7, 1994 by
Mr. Stalinski against the companies Tela
Railroad Company and Chiquita
International Trading Company in the Second Civil Court of San Pedro
Sula, seeking a joint conviction and the payment of five million six
hundred and thirty thousand dollars or its equivalent in national currency
at the applicable rate of exchange at the time the judgment is executed.
In the aforementioned civil case, the plaintiff, Mr. Stalinski, claims
damages and injury suffered in the kidnap attempt and other acts allegedly
committed against him by various employees of the aforementioned
companies. 30.
The State denies that there was an unjustified delay in the
granting of justice, insofar as the legal time limits and delays were
respected and the judicial investigations were conducted in a timely
manner having regard to the circumstances and the reasonable limitations
that were without prejudice to a fair trial. It also contended that a
ruling against the petitioner could not be considered as a denial of
justice, when a fair trial had been granted and the petitioner had
exercised and was continuing to have recourse to the remedies and appeals
available to him under domestic jurisdiction. The State claims, moreover,
that the complaint was filed after the applicable time limit had expired,
since it was submitted after the expiration of the six-month period
following the acts that are the object of the complaint. 31.
The State of Honduras also contends that evidence has not been
brought against the judges and magistrates who were alleged to have
violated the human rights of the petitioner. It further contends that
there is no evidence in the files of the Inspectorate of Courts of
Honduras that the petitioner has made use of the remedy of
amparo to complain against these violations. IV.
ANALYSIS
A.
Competence ratione loci,
ratione personae, ratione temporis and ratione materiae of the
Commission. 32.
The Commission is competent to hear the petition presented by the
petitioners. The acts
alleged, should they be proven, could violate the rights set forth in the
Convention and thereby wrong a natural person who is subject to the
jurisdiction of the Honduran State, in circumstances in which the
obligation to respect and guarantee the rights set forth in that
instrument was already binding on the State of Honduras.[4]/
The Commission therefore proceeded to examine whether the present case
fulfills the other requirements set forth in Articles 46 and 47 of The
American Convention. B.
Other requirements for admissibility of the petition a.
Exhaustion of domestic remedies 33.
Article 46(1)(a) of the Convention establishes as a requirement for
a petition to be admissible “that the remedies under domestic law have
been pursued and exhausted in accordance with generally recognized
principles of International law.” 34.
In this case, the State opposed during the first phase of the
proceeding an exception to the rule that
the petition should not be deemed admissible on the grounds
that available domestic remedies had not been exhausted, arguing that
judicial actions–both civil and criminal–were still being pursued in
the domestic jurisdiction and that the dismissals against Messrs.
Anderson, Koch and Aragón were interlocutory orders and not final
judgments. Continuing its argument, the State contended that the
criminal case was a single proceeding, that is to say, the same action
being taken against nine accused and that, consequently, it should be
decided in a single final judgment which, in this case, had still not been
handed down. The State argued
that if a petitioner was not satisfied with the judgment handed down, he
could appeal it using the remedies for appeal that were available within
the domestic jurisdiction of Honduras. With regard to the alleged
violations committed by the judges and magistrates hearing the case, the
State claimed that the petitioner should file a remedy of amparo
to complain of the violations, which he did not do. 35.
The petitioner, for his part, claims that he has exhausted all
domestic remedies with respect to the only judicial proceeding brought
before the Commission, which is the one instituted by him, in criminal
court, against Messrs. Anderson, Koch and Aragón.
The said proceeding culminated in the decision of the Supreme Court
of Justice, of December 13, 1997, in which the appeal on the grounds of
violation of the law or legal doctrine, which had been filed by the
petitioner, was declared to be inadmissible.
According to the petitioner, the above-mentioned decision
definitively confirmed the dismissal of the aforementioned accused, a
decision that has the force of a final ruling of acquittal and the effect
of res judicata.
The petitioner also claims that in this judicial proceeding there
was a delay in the hearing of the case and that the jurisdictional
remedies available to him were not effective.
36.
With respect to the other six accused, the petitioner, at the
request of the Commission, sent a copy of the decision of the Third
Criminal Court of San Pedro Sula, of January 14, 1999 to dismiss the
proceedings against Messrs. Manuel Rodríguez Escalera, Alejandro Bacoxi,
Juan José Osorio and Robert Francis Kistinger. He also sent a
“ruling” of the Court of Appeals of San Pedro Sula, of 11 August 1999,
in which the appeal filed by the petitioner against the dismissal of
January 14, 1999 was declared inadmissible.
The dismissal, which was the subject of appeal, was confirmed and
the court ordered that the sentence should be returned to the court whence
it originated for such legal action as might be appropriate. 37.
With regard to the two remaining accused–and also at the request
of the Commission-, the petitioner sent a statement by the Third Criminal
Court, dated March 28, 2000, which certified that Messrs. Charles Morgan
and Mario Matías Galindo “had not voluntarily appeared before this
court and that they were therefore fugitives from justice and that no
decision to dismiss the proceeding against them had been taken”.
The State did not challenge the authenticity of these documents. 38.
The Commission considers that, in the case sub
judice, the determination as to whether the general rule concerning
the exhaustion of domestic remedies (Article 46, paragraph 1, of the
Convention) had been respected was a matter that was closely related to
the merits of the question in dispute.
In this regard, the Inter-American Court has established that where
the State opposes in a timely manner an exception to the rule of
non-exhaustion of its domestic remedies: …
the relationship between the decision regarding applicability of the rule
and the need for timely international action in the absence of effective
domestic remedies may frequently recommend the hearing of questions
related to that rule together with the merits, …[5] 39.
Based on the foregoing, the Commission will rule on the questions
concerning the exhaustion of domestic remedies at the same time as it
rules on the merits, especially with regard to compliance with Articles 8
(right to a fair trial) and 25 (right to judicial protection) of the
American Convention. b.
Deadline for filing of petition 40.
Article 46(1)(b) of the American Convention establishes as a
requirement for a petition to be admissible that the petition should be
“lodged within a period of six months from the date on which the party
alleging violation of his rights was notified of the final judgment.” 41.
In any case, the Commission considers that in the case sub
examine, the fulfillment of the requirement set forth in Article
46(1)(b) of the American Convention relates to the exhaustion of the
remedies available under domestic jurisdiction and, consequently, decides
to defer its decision on this question until it rules on the merits of the
case. c.
Duplication of proceedings and res
judicata 42.
Articles 46(1)(c) and 47(d) of the Convention establish as a
requirement for admissibility of a petition that, respectively, the
subject of the petition or communication should not be pending in another
international proceeding for settlement and that it should not be
substantially the same as one previously studied by the Commission or by
another international organization. The
Commission is of the view that the matter, which is the subject of the
complaint, is not substantially the same as one that had been previously
studied by the Commission or by another international organization. Consequently, the Commission concludes that the requirements
set forth in Articles 46(1)(c) and 47(d) of the Convention have been met. d. Characterization
of the acts alleged 43.
Article 47(b) of the Convention provides that a petition shall be
inadmissible if it “does not state facts that tend to establish a
violation of the rights guaranteed by this Convention.” 44.
The petitioner alleges that the State has violated, inter
alia, the rights guaranteed to him under Articles 8(1) and 25 of the
Convention. The Commission
wishes to point out that, while Article 8 applies, in general, to accused
persons who are under the criminal jurisdiction of the State, in
conformity with paragraph 1 of the same instrument6,
it also provides for an obligation to respect the right of the accusing
party, in this case the petitioner, Mr. Stakinski,7
to due process. 45.
Consequently, the Commission considers that the acts alleged, if
proven, could constitute violations of the rights set forth in Articles
8(1) and 25 of the Convention, in conjunction with Article 1(1) of the
same international instrument. 46.
Based on the foregoing, the Commission concludes that the
requirement set forth in Article 47(b) of the American Convention has been
satisfied. V.
CONCLUSIONS 47.
The Commission concludes that it has competence to examine this
case and that the petition is admissible, in conformity with Article 47 of
the Convention, and decides to consider the question concerning
fulfillment of the requirements set forth in Article 46(1), sub-paragraphs
(a) and (b) at the same time as its rules on the merits of the case. 48.
Based of the arguments of law and of fact presented above, and
without prejudice to the substance of the questions. THE
INTER-AMERICAN COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS, DECIDES: 1.
To
declare the present petition admissible, insofar as it relates to alleged
violations by the State of Articles 8(1) and 25 of the Convention, in
conformity with Article 1(1) of the same international instrument. 2.
To
consider the question of the fulfillment of the requirements set forth in
Article 46(1), sub-paragraphs (a) and (b) at the same time as it rules on
the merits of the question in dispute. 3.
To
notify the parties of this decision. 4.
To
continue with the substantive analysis of the question that is the subject
of the complaint; and 5.
To
publish this decision and to include it in its annual report to the
General Assembly of the OAS. Done and signed at the headquarters of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington D.C., on this the 3rd day of October, 2000. (Signed): Hélio Bicudo, Chairman; Claudio Grossman, First Vice-Chairman; Commissioners: Marta Altolaguirre, Robert K. Goldman, Peter Laurie and Julio Prado Vallejo. [ Table of Contents | Previous | Next ] [1]
The decision of the Supreme Court of Justice reads as follows:
“Consequently, the Supreme Court of Justice, in exercise of the
powers conferred on it by Article 83 of the Law on the Organization
and Powers of the Courts, agrees as follows: Judges or courts before
which criminal proceedings are instituted that arise from questions of
a civil, commercial, or administrative nature, shall stay the
proceedings until such time as a ruling has been made by the judges or
courts before which the questions are being heard that sufficient
grounds exist where, in accordance with Article 194 of
the Procedural Code, the ruling should be based exclusively on
the existence of a crime. And, in the absence of such ruling, the
criminal judge or court shall not order the arrest, detention or
imprisonment or in any way whatsoever inconvenience the person that is
subject to the proceeding. All of the foregoing is without prejudice
to the hearing of the preliminary issues governed by Article III,
Title 1 of the Code of Criminal Procedure and to the hearing of the
criminal action to which Article 20 of the same legislation refers.” [2]
Article 956 of the Code of Procedure provides that: “notwithstanding
the provisions of the preceding Article, Courts of Appeal or Review
may on their own motion void judgments when any of the grounds that
give rise to review on account of a flaw in form are clearly
present.” [3]
The petitioner cites in this connection Article 383, paragraph 3 of
the Code of Procedures, which states: “the statement of grounds for
the ruling shall contain a description of any acts whose commission is
deemed to have been proven, the part allegedly played by each of the
accused, and a description of the aggravating, attenuating or
exculpatory circumstances.” [4]
Honduras ratified the American Convention on Human Rights on September
8, 1977. [5]
Inter-American Court of Human Rights, case of Velásquez Rodríguez,
Preliminary Objections, Judgment of June 26, 1987, paragraph 93. 6
Article 8.Right to a fair trial: Every
person has the right to a hearing, with due guarantees and within a
reasonable time, by a competent, independent and impartial tribunal,
previously established by law, in the substantiation of any accusation
of a criminal nature made against him or for the determination of his
rights and obligations of a civil, labor, fiscal or any other nature. 7 See IACHR, case of Génie Lacayo, ruling of 29 January 1997, paragraph 75. |