Author(s)

Carlos Magno Alhakim Figueiredo Júnior¹, Cássius Guimarães Chai^1,2, Francisco Campos da Costa^1,3, Mônica Fontenelle Carneiro^1,2, Alberto Manuel Poletti Adorno^1,4

¹Faculdade de Direito de Vitória (FDV), Vitória, Brazil.
²Law Department, Federal University of Maranhão (UFMA), São Luís, Brazil.
³Faculdade Santa Terezinha (CEST), São Luís, Brazil.
⁴Law Department, Universidade Nacional de Assuncíon, Assunción, Paraguay.

Brazil’s 2020 police fatalities reveal a stark bias against Black victims, urging expanded research. This paper examines the presumption of innocence regarding Black individuals, assessing its compliance and barriers in judicial contexts and as a treatment norm. The hypothesis challenges the inobservance of this principle for Black people’s pre-trial procedures. Investigating the racialized lens of Brazil’s penal system, it weighs the principle of innocence against Black people’s real fierce experiences and the judiciary’s role in fighting this violence. Employing a deductive approach, it reviews doctrine and laws through SciELO, Public Domain, and Google Scholar for PPGD/FDV databases. Findings expose structural violence erasing Black innocence; thus, sentencing has to align with lawful and factual bases. Rectifying racial disparities demands focused judicial research on countering institutionalized violence and ensuring social justice. The results show that structural violence kills Black people in Brazil not only by avoiding giving them any reasonable doubt about their guilt but also by violating the principle of presumption of innocence. In case any anticipation of the performance of the sentence, which is not based on legitimate legal reasons and concrete facts, occurs, the execution of the penalty shall not happen. To conclude, public security is one of the fundamental fields of social and state action to correct the racial inequalities that make Black people more vulnerable in Brazil. The judiciary must conduct further research on episodic and concrete surveys of the resulting regulation—of a norm so as to base their convictions on an ideal of social justice to combat institutionalized structural violence that kills Black people in Brazil without giving them the benefit of the doubt.

Extermination, Black People, Presumption of Innocence, Constitutional Principle, Vulnerability

Figueiredo Júnior, C. , Chai, C. , da Costa, F. , Carneiro, M. and Adorno, A. (2023) Extermination of Black People and Violation of the Constitutional Principle of the Presumption of Innocence. Beijing Law Review, 14, 1563-1579. doi: 10.4236/blr.2023.143084.