Estado violador e erro policial:

Um estudo de caso sobre a falibilidade do sistema de identificação criminal e do desvalor da vítima perante a responsabilização civil do Estado.

Abstract

Summary: This case study analyzes the civil liability of the State of Pernambuco arising from successive errors in the criminal identification of an innocent citizen, fictitiously identified as Caio. Between 2017 and 2023, the victim was the target of seven procedural errors in different police stations, resulting in investigations, indictments, complaints and the issuing of arrest warrants for crimes committed by his brother, Rogério. The real perpetrator of the crimes used false self-identification as a strategy, taking advantage of the presumption of veracity given to a phenotypically white person in addition to the absence of documents at the time of the arrests in the act. Highlighted is the state's failure to comply with Law No. 12,037/2009, which makes criminal identification mandatory when there is no civil identification, and points to the existence of a "whiteness pact"1, in which the word of a phenotypically white suspect received an undue presumption of veracity. The consequences for the victim included the development of psychological disorders and exclusion from the formal job market due to the impossibility of issuing criminal clearance certificates. It concludes by establishing the objective liability of the State due to the negligence and incompetence of its agents, highlighting the devaluation of the victim and the application of derisory compensation in similar cases of judicial and police error, in which there is a disregard for the name, existential, professional and psychological damages suffered by victims of errors in criminal identification.

¹ BENTO, Cida. O Pacto da branquitude, Companhia das letras, 1ª edição, São Paulo, 2022.