Substantial Truth and the Impossibility of Conviction after Manifestation of the Public Prosecutor's Office for Acquittal

• Autor(a) principal: Garcia, Rafael de Deus
• Data de Publicação: 2017
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Revista Brasileira de Direito Processual Penal (Online)
• Texto Completo: https://revista.ibraspp.com.br/RBDPP/article/view/81
• topic: Article 385; Substantial truth; Acquittal; Public ministry; Adversarial System.; Artigo 385 do CPP; Verdade real; Absolvição; Ministério Público; Contraditório.

This paper defends the thesis that the criminal conviction of an accused after a plea of acquittal by the Public Prosecutor's Office in final arguments offends not only the accusatory principle, but also the right to an adversarial process. It is known that we already have an advanced debate on the constitutionality of article 385 of the Criminal Procedure Code, which treats the MP's final allegations as mere opinion and which allows the judge to convict the defendant even when the prosecutor requests the acquittal, so this article intends to contribute to the issue by demonstrating that this legal possibility has on its ground the substantial truth principle, unsustainable both from the epistemological and the political-juridical point of view. It is a fact that the accusatory principle prohibits the judge from replacing the accusation when it abandons any accusatory narrative capable of sustaining any conviction.