ABOLITION OF THE DEATH PENALTY IN BRAZIL. OLD AND NEW PERSPECTIVES. TRIBUTE TO 150 YEARS OF THE ABOLITION OF THE DEATH PENALTY IN PORTUGAL

Abstract

This text corresponds, with minor changes, to the communication made at the Colloquium Commemorating the One Hundred and Fifty Years of Abolition of Death Penalty in Portugal, held in October 2017 at the Faculty of Law of the University of Coimbra. From a brief digression to the history of the death penalty in Brazil, it defends, essentially, and opposing the understanding defended by many during its centenary, the confrontation of the death penalty as a fundamentally legal problem, and not merely political: death is not a penalty; and punishment, as a legal sanction, cannot be death. The annihilation of the subject to be punished is not, and cannot aspire to be, a criminal sanction.

Keywords

• pena, pena de morte, sanção jurídico-criminal, pena de morte no brasil, abolição da pena de morte