The Attorney General of the Republic, Augusto Aras, defended in the Federal Supreme Court (STF) the unconstitutionality of using the thesis of legitimate defense of honor to justify the acquittal of those convicted of femicide. In an opinion sent this Thursday (11) to the Supreme Court, Aras asks that judicial decisions that used the argument be annulled, including judgments by the Jury Court. In 2021, the STF prohibited the use of the thesis. The understanding is in force, but the case needs to be decided definitively by the Court. The date has not been set. In the understanding of the prosecutor, in addition to judicial decisions, the prohibition of the use of the thesis should also be considered unconstitutional for the defense of those accused of femicide and in accusations made by the police. “No attempt to justify the murder of women, to the benefit of their executioners, will be tolerated, under penalty of immediate affront to constitutional precepts of the utmost relevance and contempt for a whole rule that takes us in the opposite direction, contributing to the perpetuation of impunity in crimes of this nature and the increase in the already alarming number of deaths”, argued Aras. History In the petition, the PGR also recalled that Brazilian legislation has a history of norms that approved violence against women. Between 1605 and 1830, a man who had his “honor damaged” by adultery was allowed to act violently against a woman. In the following years, between 1830 and 1890, penal norms of the time stopped allowing murder, but kept adultery as a crime. Only in the Penal Code of 1940, the acquittal of accused who committed crime under the influence of emotion or passion ceased to exist, recalled the prosecutor. “The progressive advance of legislation, towards an environment of greater gender equality and objection to the unjustified impunity of men for the death of women, was not accompanied in equal cadence by the customs and values of part of society, which naturalized for too long a period the possibility of defending the honor of the man, even at the expense of the woman’s life”, he concluded.
Agência Brasil
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