Brazil's CNJ orders death certificates to record deaths caused by police action
A unanimously approved resolution requires registry offices to state the context of the death, not just the medical cause, and bans terms such as "auto de resistência".
Translated from the Portuguese original by the Panorama newsroom. Read in Portuguese
Summary written by the Panorama newsroom from the sources listed below. Facts are attributed to the original publications.
Brazil's National Council of Justice (CNJ) has ruled that death certificates for people killed in operations by public security agents must expressly state that circumstance, according to g1. Today, these documents record only the medical cause of death, without mentioning the context in which it occurred.
The resolution was approved unanimously in the council's virtual plenary. The rule covers deaths caused, directly or indirectly, by members of the civil and military police, fire departments, the Federal Police and the Federal Highway Police, as well as other institutions with security-related police powers. It also applies to disappearance cases in which a presumed death is recognized by the courts.
The text bans expressions considered stigmatizing or that normalize violence, such as "auto de resistência" (resisting arrest), "resistência seguida de morte" (resistance followed by death) and "confronto" (confrontation). The CNJ recommends standardized wording describing the death as non-natural and violent, occurring in the context of an intervention by a public security agency. Older certificates may be corrected when a court decision recognizes police involvement.
According to g1, the record does not mean automatic recognition of civil, administrative or criminal liability of the state or of the agents, which must be determined in separate proceedings. The stated goal is to increase transparency and oversight of state lethality and make it easier for families to access compensation and benefits.
The rapporteur of the proposal, Justice Edson Fachin, president of the CNJ and of the Supreme Federal Court (STF), said the phenomenon affects "mainly the young, Black and peripheral population." According to him, the omission in the records forces families to repeatedly prove the circumstances of the death and deprives the government of reliable data for prevention policies.