“Morreu por ser mulher”? A construção da morte como feminicídio pelo sistema criminal de Salvador (BA)

Abstract

With the enactment of Law no. 13.104 in March 2015, feminicide was included in the Brazilian Penal Code as a type of aggravated homicide, opening up a new field of possibilities for the interpretation, processing, and prosecution of female homicides committed for reasons of gender, or, in the form enshrined in the law, “for reasons of the condition of the female sex”. In view of this, this research investigates the framing practices of violent female deaths by the criminal justice system in Salvador (BA), in order to understand how deaths have been framed as feminicide. Initially, we discussed the concept of feminicide, recovering the paths and translations of the word, from the first definitions to the critical revisions of intersectional and transfeminist points of view; up until its consecration as a norm, as it was incorporated into Brazilian legislation. From a qualitative approach, we used documentary analysis of police inquiries, complaints, and court cases, and the observation of trial sessions of the Jury Court, referring to cases of attempted or completed female homicides occurring in Salvador between 2015 and 2021, including cases with transexual victims. The narratives about the cases reveal a variety of contexts, motivations, and modus operandi, which were classified into 7 scenarios in which different power dynamics interact: couple relationships; family relationships; neighborhood relationships; sexual violence; prostitution; police violence and organized crime. By observing the framing operations carried out at different stages of the criminal process in each of the scenarios, we identified three types of naming trajectory: linear trajectories, in which the cases are recognized at all procedural stages; uneven trajectories, in which feminicide is recognized by some actors in the criminal system, but not by others; and non-naming trajectories. We also discuss some obstacles and facilitators to the incorporation of feminicide into the practices of the criminal justice system, analyzing the learning processes of the system and its actors, both in terms of the practical handling of the legal categories established by the Feminicide Law and the gender literacy required to interpret the cases. Although we see the incorporation of discourses on violent deaths of females based on gender perspectives, the logic of the “crime of passion” remains present, both in police practices of recording and taking statements and in speeches in the Jury Court. Crimes that occur in the context of couple relationships find it easier to be classified as feminicide, but there are still challenges in recognizing “domestic and family violence” as a circumstance of feminicide. Cases occurring in other contexts face greater challenges in being named, even if the gendered nature is evident in the practice of sexual violence or in the excessive violence against the victims's bodies, demonstrating a greater difficulty in using the category “contempt for, or discrimination against, the status of being a woman”. Although we found one case with a transexual victim reported as feminicide, the processing of crimes of this nature still comes up against the cisnormativity prevailing in the criminal justice system, expressed in the absence of categories for recording and classifying trans people, the lack of preparation of its operators in terms of the treatment of victims, as well as the precariousness of investigations. We conclude that the construction of death as feminicide does not obey strict criteria, but is a complex and uneven process that involves different actors and stages of the criminal justice system, and whose logics for delimiting what goes in and what stays out of the boundaries of naming are often not evident.