Para uma história da delação premiada no brasil

Abstract

Does the quest for remote origins of the plea bargain [delação premiada] – particularly on the famous Joaquim Silvério dos Reis denouncement in the Minas Conspiracy – really correspond to the legal historian task? Is it possible to prescind of the historical specificities of a seventeenth century denouncement in order to make it seem more similar to the institute that has been constructed in the last decades? By a more detailed analysis of the historical sources and taking into account that the historian must look up to otherness of the past, this article aims to distinguish, even if in a schematic way, these two moments of the history of the plea bargain [delação premiada] in Brazil. Avoiding the dilution between past and present, the historical analysis of the plea bargain [delação premiada] allows us to demonstrate its absolutely different foundations and operation within the two historical periods (the logic of mercês and the contractual logic), going beyond the perfunctory analogies thitherto created by the existing historical analysis.