Resumo

SOUZA, Lídio de. Judiciário e exclusão: O linchamento como mecanismo de reafirmação de poder. Aná. Psicológica [online]. 1999, vol.17, n.2, pp.327-338. ISSN 0870-8231.

The objective of this work was to identify the implications of police and judiciary institutions in a lynching case occurred in a Brazilian small town, in which three suspects of a local homicide were executed. The methodology utilized was the Case Study, accomplished through content analysis of the legally instituted processes (established to clarify the occurrence) and through information collected in the media, interviews, and informal conversations with local residents. The legal evidences which would permit the identification of those involved in the lynching were blurred by a set of technical faults, untrue depositions, and negligence, which transformed the processes into supports for the impunity of the authors of the crimes, protected by the community and the authorities. The analysis of the processes pointed out the construction of a judicial truth which furthered itself from the factual truth and, furthermore, revealed the involvement of the judiciary and police institutions with local political interest. In the occurrence analyzed the judiciary abdicated of its prerogatives with respect to the monopoly of revenge and entrusted the local elite members the power to make justice. The lynching case studied constituted an instrument of social control, similar to those occurred in Brazil by the end of nineteenth century.

Palavras-chave : Lynching; justice; moral exclusion; power judiciary.

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