Filhos que matam pais: análise jurídico penal do parricídio à luz da psicologia forense

Abstract

Parricide is the homicide that binds the victim to the perpetrators of the crime by the parent-child relationship. In cases where the victim is the father, the crime may be called patricide, while in cases where the victim is the mother, it is called matricide. Cause of enormous social revulsion due to the social, moral and religious values it represents, parricide finds a similar disapproval in legal circles at the time of its judgments. On the other hand, forensic psychology has developed important studies in the last decades to identify the causes and circumstances of this peculiar crime. Such studies point out that parricides can be divided into three groups of people: mentally ill, young people who have been severely abused during childhood and adolescence, and people characterized by seriously misbehaving around a antisocial behavior. Since it is a kind of homicide, the characteristics of this criminal type are analyzed in detail, especially those that identify with the parricide. It is also verified, through the analysis of judicial processes already judged by the Brazilian courts, the legal treatment applied to the parricide in the present day. It is observed that the studies developed by forensic psychology do not reach the operators of the law, since the elements understood as relevant by the psychological science are despised by the legal science. Three hypotheses of acquittal are presented as possible for the cases of parricide, which are the improper parricides in the face of the mentally ill, self-defense or third-party selfdefense for the facts in which the parricide acts to protect himself or a third party of current or imminent violence to be practiced by their parents and the non-requirement of different conduct, over law hypothesis of exclusion of guilt. For those cases where the outcome is the authors' condemnation, penalty criteria are addressed taking into consideration the studies of forensic psychology.