In his book, Dallagnol defends the relativization of the concept of evidence.
Brazilian federal prosecutor Deltan Dallagnol, coordinator of the Curitiba branch of the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office (MPF) and one of the best-known figures in the Lava Jato corruption investigation, published a book on legal theory in which he criticizes and relativizes some of the concepts of evidence used in courts. His main target is what he calls hyper-guaranteeism, or the "exacerbation of the right to defense" of defendants. According to Dallagnol, greater emphasis should be placed on indirect evidence, circumstantial evidence, and presumptions, and there should be some relativization in the interpretation of principles such as the presumption of innocence, enshrined in the 1988 Constitution.
Paraná 247 - Brazilian federal prosecutor Deltan Dallagnol, coordinator of the Curitiba branch of the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office (MPF) and one of the best-known figures in the Lava Jato corruption investigation, has published a book on legal theory in which he criticizes and relativizes some of the concepts of evidence used in courts. His main target is what he calls hyper-guaranteeism, or the "exacerbation of the right to defense" of defendants. According to Dallagnol, greater emphasis should be placed on indirect evidence, circumstantial evidence, and presumptions, and there should be some relativization in the interpretation of principles such as the presumption of innocence, enshrined in the 1988 Constitution.
The information is from Report by Luiz Maklouf Carvalho in the State of São Paulo.
The book "The Logic of Evidence in Legal Proceedings – Direct Evidence, Circumstantial Evidence, and Presumptions" exposes the legal thinking of federal prosecutor Deltan Dallagnol. The work, a result of his master's degree at Harvard Law School in the United States, was published in 2015 by Livraria do Advogado publishing house.
"These 362 pages, in which the prosecutor, who turned 37 last January, turns the legal-philosophical question of the value of evidence inside out with theoretical depth and didactic clarity. 'To prove is to argue' is one of the book's theses. The most, shall we say, lively part is where the prosecutor wields argumentative weapons against ideas with which he disagrees – one of them defended by Minister Cármen Lúcia, the current president of the Supreme Federal Court (STF)."
The minister appears on page 264, chapter 8, where Dallagnol discusses 'what is the acceptable level of probability for issuing a criminal conviction?'. She then quotes a statement by Cármen Lúcia during the trial of Criminal Action 470, the so-called mensalão scandal: 'For a conviction, certainty is required, not even a high probability is enough'.
Citing several authors – including Judge Sérgio Moro – Dallagnol disagrees. He argues that the existence of evidence beyond a reasonable doubt is sufficient – and shows that in the same trial of AP 470, ministers Celso de Mello, Dias Toffoli, Gilmar Mendes, Luiz Fux, and Rosa Weber expressed themselves in favor of this criterion of reasonable doubt (an expression cited 58 times in the records of AP 470, according to the author's research).
“Contrary to what we have studied,” Dallagnol concludes, “Minister Cármen Lúcia, also in the Mensalão trial, argued that ‘a conviction in criminal proceedings requires a judgment of certainty, the absence of reasonable doubt about the existence of the fact imputed to the agent is not enough.’ The Lava Jato judge is cited once again: ‘It is worth noting, with Moro (in the book Money Laundering Crime), that the standard beyond reasonable doubt is a high standard, required for the conviction of the defendant to criminal penalties’ (italics in the original).”