Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

This article analyzes the conceptual problems regarding the legal nature of the plea bargaining and the just cause, seeking to establish limits regarding the recognition of the content of the version presented by the informers, with greater attention to the probative value, as seen in the Brazilian legal system, seeking if it is possible to include the content of what can be understood as accepted just cause, or not, as a legitimate requirement for the criminal action procedure. To fulfill this objective, we sought to establish existence and validity requirements for the beginning of a valid criminal prosecution procedure, highlighting the criminal political aspects that end up influencing in the conclusion of the inherent contours of the object of the analysis of the present study.

The legal collaboration, a type of evidence used on organized crime prosecutions, demands free will of the defendant. Appraising the defendant’s free will, many critics cover the deals made with an arrested defendant during the negotiation of the legal collaboration. These two institutes — legal collaboration and pre-trial detention —, although they do not present themselves as a cause-effect relation, commonly are approached in practice as associated. This essay intends to evaluate the defendant’s free will during pre-trial detention and the legal collaboration’s bargaining. It asserts a strict and clear relation between pre-trial detention and the legal collaboration bargaining. Identifying occasional problems do not imply the conclusion on the existence of a structural problem to legal collaboration institute. This consideration is relevant to avoid superficial solutions that could fragilize even more the held defendant. Methodologically, from a literature review and document analysis about the subject, the paper clarifies what is a “criminal case” and what it means to the study.

The present research intends to analyze the plea bargaining based on its political-criminal foundation, in order to achieve the tension it maintains in relation to certain fundamental guarantees of the defendant, especially the one who signs the agreement. On this occasion, there will be substantially a contraposition between the legal procedure of collaboration and the principles of the adversary, ample defense, presumption of innocence, and non-self-incrimination. The application of the plea bargain proves extremely controversial not only in the common sense, often conveyed by the media, but mainly in the technical perspective, especially in relation to the scientific debate, which reflects the complexity of the proposed theme. For an effective approach to the theme, the work uses the deductive, historical-evolutionary and dialectical methods, being the bibliographical research the technique fundamentally used.

This article aims to discuss the relevant subject of double record of plea agreement, as well as the possibility of withholding access to one of the registration forms from the investigated/accused person. The matter is highlighted notably in face of the article writing 4, §13, of Law 12.850 / 13, which provides that, whenever possible, should promote the registration record by audiovisual means, indicating expressly of registration of the statements collected in collaboration. In addition, current data indicate the existence of a significant number of new technologies, endowed with skillful mechanisms to promote the registration of declarations by the means provided by law, indicating that the legal authorities have the onus to justify the reasons that lead to the unavailability of audiovisual record of the award-winning collaborator testimony. Finally, it is salutary to make available to defense all forms of registration of the declarations obtained in the case of delation, mainly because the Public Prosecutor's Office has knowledge of such elements, so that the restriction of access implies violation of parity of arms.

The ideas of procedural consensus and celerity increasingly shape the Criminal Procedural Law of Democratic countries. Negotiated criminal justice solutions have been multiplying in the last years, posing a multiplicity of challenges to the pure and traditional procedural doctrine, to the rights traditionally assured to the procedural actors, being important to question if the (even more) organized criminality and the transnational and technological methods of crime did not shift the center of the confrontation between the efficient administration of justice and the rights of the accused. The Portuguese Republic is no exception: without a legislative framework explicitly guarantying a way to benefit those who collaborate with Justice, one must first question if the Criminal Procedural Code allows or may allow criminal Justice negotiated solutions; we will analyze some foreseen legal solutions of consensualism, not forgeting the Portuguese doctrine and courts decisions.

There are two classical debates in Spain, referred to the attribution or not of the investigating phase to the Prosecution Office, and the introduction of the discretionary power (principle of opportunity) in our Justice system. Besides them, there is a new legal debate about the convenience of articulating legal measures that encourage the collaboration with the justice, and especially, the confessions and denunciations of criminal repentants, as instruments that would favor the obtaining of valuable information and sources of evidence, especially referred to white-collar crime. This study exposes the different legal figures used currently in Spain as incentives to reward the delation of collaborators, witnesses and defendants, and examines its evolution with a view to their future incorporation into the Spanish procedural law.

This article analyzes the possibility of an unilateral plea bargain, not depending on a previous agreement with the prosecution. From the comparative study between the American and Italian bargained criminal justice and the one practiced in Brazil, it reveals the acceptance of this type of cooperation, according to the nature of the benefits involved, as a natural and inevitable consequence of the constitutional principles that guide Brazilian Criminal Procedure Law.

This editorial intends to examine the systematics of the correction rounds in the cases of articles that receive the decision of "conditional approval", based on the reviewers’ comments and the evaluation of the journal editorial team. Besides reinforcing the importance of such phase to the production of consistent scientific knowledge, premises and guidelines will be presented to inform the author's action to correct the article and write the response letter to the editorial board.

This article deals with the problems involved in the provisional execution of the sentence in the Brazilian criminal procedural system, especially with respect to the constitutional guarantee of the presumption of innocence, here in its political-constitutional value. In the current national context in which it is heavily invested in relativizations of fundamental guarantees and in false punitive solutions, it is essential that the criminal procedure be imposed from the principles enshrined in the 1988 Constitution. It intends to demonstrate the new contours of the position built by the Federal Supreme Court on the subject, its possible criticisms and impacts on the commitment of the legitimacy of the decisions made in criminal matters by the Judiciary.

This editorial develops an analysis of the understanding of orality from the fundamental guarantees. The orality is a technique that allows the amplification of the full defense and adversary proceedings. The editorial proposes a critical dialogue with the conformation of orality in the theory of the Brazilian process and its strong connection with the inquisitorial tradition. The debate with the authors of the dossier allows us to discuss other possibilities for understanding orality and experiences in Chilean and Argentine procedural reforms.