The search for the real truth and the reality of the police search: the oficial expertise of Rio de Janeiro in the crossfire

• Autor(a) principal: Giovanelli, Alexandre
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Revista de Estudos Empíricos em Direito
• Texto Completo: https://reedrevista.org/reed/article/view/789
• topic: criminal forensics; coroner expertise; preliminar investigation; right to contradiction; inquisitorial system; perícia criminal; perícia médico legal; inquérito policial; direito ao contraditório; sistema inquisitorial

Official expertise plays an important role as an instrument for guaranteeing human rights. It provides a conceptual and logical basis based on scientific postulates, which can be shared and used by the different parties in the criminal process. However, a series of material and procedural injunctions has reduced the role of expert institutions to a legitimizing instrument of inquisitorial procedures linked to police investigation. In the present study, a survey of occurrence records and respective reports associated with deaths occurred by the action of state agents was carried out. The results indicate that the police clearly had a discriminatory bias in their work in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. In turn, the reports showed technical shortcomings related to the little use of technologies, methodological indeterminacy and persistent disregard of standardized operating procedures. In the same way, biases were observed in the content of the reports that point to an alignment with the search for the incrimination of certain individuals. Furthermore, the expert request is subject to the discretionary power of the police authority, which introduces an additional bias in the targeted search for the “real truth”. So, justice and police are systems that are fully integrated in their methods and practices and that act as instances of social control of certain groups. In turn, official expertise is also fully integrated into this coercive system. Thus, its distorted performance compromises the principles of the presumption of innocence, the right to the contradictory and the broad defense of the parties.