This case is about three police officers in Guatemala who committed murder and were sentenced to death. One of them died while on death row, due to the poor detention condition. The other two remained on death row for fourteen years until their sentence was commuted. Consistently with the Court’s previous decisions in Martínez Coronado v. Guatemala and Fermín Ramírez v. Guatemala, the Court found Guatemala in violation of the American Convention because the defendants had been sentenced to death not because of what they had done but because of their presumed dangerousness to society. It also found it in violation of the American Convention because of the condition of detention at the prison where the victims were held, and because the Court of Appeal had failed to review the factual issues raised during its review of the case.
Case Summary: Rodríguez Revolorio et al. v. Guatemala