Probative Relevance of the Victim's Word and Its Irrepeatability in Criminal Proceedings

Abstract

This article proposes to analyze, based primarily on bibliographic and jurisprudential review, the evidential relevance of the statements of the victim of domestic and family violence collected in the investigative phase, in view of the small set of evidence existing in crimes of such a nature, considering, especially, when the subjective discourse of the offended cannot be repeated in the stage of criminal prosecution. In addition, we seek to expose the exception to the dialectical obedience of the dispensability of the contradictory in the non-repeatable evidence produced in the police investigation, with emphasis on the sufficiency of the word of the victim in the criminal proceedings in the crimes governed by the Maria da Penha Law, provided that it remains coherent and well-founded, as a suitable evidential means to form the motivated conviction of the judge for criminal conviction in the crimes committed in the domestic context, that occur, for the most part, in the underground. It is concluded that the Brazilian legal system does not prevent the magistrate from appreciating the evidence from the police investigation, establishing, however, that such evidence is provided with effective and corroborated elements in the adversarial system and ample defense in the procedural instruction.