In the cracks of the justice system, there is heroism. It is not in authoritarian judicial attitudes or in flashy and media conduct that tries to choreograph moral superiority. It is not in the false-heroism of self-legality, the trickery of that judge who defends the legitimacy of a mediocre and sectarian legal interpretation based on his self-attributed quality of character, disguising the lack of quality of his decision.
In the cracks, there is silent and discreet heroism. Standing out for its moral and intellectual fiber, it produces decisions that are based on the integrity and exemplary conduct of the judge who studies, thinks and writes. The simplicity and intelligence of those who respect the ethical and intellectual commitment of the judiciary need to be reported and known.
The juspornographic exploits of the magistocracy are celebrated annually in . To shine a light on genuine judicial heroism, we now have the Judicial Integrity Beacon. It’s not a trophy or “awards”, but public recognition.
The person who, at the end of 2024, embodied the Lighthouse of Judicial Integrity was a judge, Minister Maria Elizabeth Rocha, from the STM (Superior Military Court).
In 2019, in Rio, ten soldiers machine-gunned the musician’s car, alongside his wife and son. , Evaldo and the garbage collector, all black, died.
Convicted in the first instance, the . The vote of the rapporteur, Air Lieutenant-Brigadier Minister Carlos Oliveira, summarized it as follows: “There is no way to disregard the occurrence of misfortune, fatality […]. It appears that they did not want the result of death, especially of civilian citizens, but they wanted to contain criminal action, even if imaginary, in a city dominated by fear and violence.”
Minister Elizabeth, the court’s first and only woman, delivered the most courageous unsuccessful vote of the year. And it offered a guide for the self-correction of the judicial factory that produces cruelty, injustice and suffering, if illegality were not enough.
The jurisprudential philosophy summarized in the following excerpts, despite being rejected by magistocratic reasoning, is the only one compatible with the Brazilian Constitution:
“State violence is not just a consequence of specific deviations or excesses, but a reflection of a structure that historically chooses certain bodies and identities as deserving of protection and others as targets of exclusion. Recognizing and confronting this reality is fundamental to achieving the constitutional objectives of Republic.”
“State violence perpetrated through institutional discriminatory acts is not capable of mitigating the responsibility of public agents in the construction of a more just and egalitarian society. In this sense, exempting public agents from liability for voluntary, manifestly discriminatory acts means legitimizing state violence that conceives black, female and homosexual bodies as of lesser value.”
“The person shot by the military was a poor, brown man who worked recycling garbage and, when helping a family man who had been hit by a gunshot, he was conceived as a criminal and killed.”
Soldiers who saw two black men and, because they were black, shot, were acquitted. It was neither misfortune nor fatality.
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