opportunity. According to the State party, the question of the exhaustion of domestic remedies must be considered in relation to each specific case. As far as the author is concerned, the State party claims that the review of his conviction in cassation was not limited to formal or legal aspects, but allowed for a complete review of the facts and the evidence on which the conviction had been based, as the Supreme Court judgement in the author’s case actually states. As to the scope of review in cassation, the State party argues that judicial practice has evolved on the question of the scope of review in cassation, especially in respect of errors of fact and assessment of evidence. The State party claims that this point is addressed in the cassation judgement too. In the State party’s view, therefore, the author should have submitted an application for amparo in order to allow the Constitutional Court to consider the scope of the review undertaken in his specific case. actually refers to a situation that has always existed, for the Supreme Court may examine the facts in cassation proceedings in cases characterized by extreme arbitrariness or manifest irrationality. 5.2 The author emphasizes that it is untrue that in cassation the Supreme Court undertook a complete review of the errors of fact in the judgement. He calls attention to the fact that the judgement handed down by the National High Court ignored evidence presented in his defence, and that this was not reviewed in cassation. According to the author, his communication is identical to the one on which the Committee ruled in the Gómez Vázquez case and should be dealt with in the same manner. He alleges that, while the State party claims the possibility of a remedy of amparo before the Constitutional Court, it also admits that if he were to exercise that remedy it would be dismissed, which he considers to be proof of its futility. Decision of the Committee on admissibility 4.3 The State party refers to the judgement handed down by the Supreme Court in the author’s case, which reads: “As a perusal of this judgement will confirm, the various parties have had the opportunity to formulate more than 170 grounds for cassation, frequently invoking errors of fact in the assessment of evidence and the subsequent review of proven facts. The presumption of innocence is also invoked as grounds for challenging the rationality and logic applied in assessing the evidence. This implies that we are speaking of a remedy that goes beyond the strictly defined, formal limits of cassation in the conventional sense and satisfies the requirement of a second hearing.” 6. At its eightieth session, on 8 March 2004, the Committee found that domestic remedies had been exhausted in accordance with article 5, paragraph 2 (b), of the Optional Protocol and declared the communication admissible inasmuch as it raised issues relating to article 14, paragraph 5, of the Covenant. Submissions of the State party on the merits (a) Legislative amendment extending the remedy of appeal in Spain 7.1 The State party reports that Organic Law No. 19/2003, of 23 December 2003, instituted the right to a second hearing in Spain, empowering the Criminal Divisions of the High Courts of Justice to try appeals against rulings handed down by the provincial courts and providing for the creation of an Appeals Division in the National High Court. According to the preamble, the aim of this Act was, in addition to reducing the workload of the Second Division of the Supreme Court, to resolve the controversy that arose following publication of the Human Rights Committee’s opinion of 20 July 2000, in which it found that Spain’s current cassation procedure violated the Covenant. The State party further notes that the considerable extension of the scope of cassation had necessitated a legislative amendment to transfer responsibility from the Supreme Court and allow it to confine itself to standardizing the application of the law. The State party stresses that the law was amended not because the scope of cassation was not broad enough to meet the requirements of the Covenant but because, on the contrary, that scope had been broadened so far that it became necessary to address the problem of the Supreme Court’s excessive caseload. 4.4 The State party argues that a heavier penalty was imposed in full compliance with the accusatorial procedure and that the author was fully aware of the penalties associated with the charges; moreover, it was quite untrue to say that it was a first-time conviction for the author. In the State party’s view, the fact that a number of States parties have made reservations to article 14, paragraph 5, of the Covenant, thereby excluding its application to cases in which a heavier sentence is handed down, does not imply that the provision itself precludes the imposition of a heavier sentence. Author’s comments 5.1 In his written submission of 25 July 2003, the author reiterates the futility of submitting an application for amparo to the Constitutional Court. He says that the settled practice of the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court both before and after publication of the Committee’s opinion in the Gómez Vázquez case has not changed with regard to cassation proceedings, in the sense that neither will review matters of fact in a given case. He indicates that the so-called evolution of judicial practice 115