A legitimidade do poder de investigação criminal do Ministério Público no ordenamento jurídico brasileiro

Abstract

The Federal Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil establishes the Public Ministry, a permanent institution that aims to defend the juridical order, the democratic state and the inalienable social and individual rights. Among the constitutionally assigned functions of the Parquet, it was not expressly included the power to directly conduct criminal investigations. Notwithstanding, members of the institution routinely perform or participate in criminal investigations procedures, giving rise to dispute among many jurists. Therefore, this work seeks to discuss the legitimacy of criminal investigations conducted by members of the Public Ministry. For this, it was defined, in the first place, the institutions related to the pretrial investigations, like the Police Inquiry, the Judicial Police and the Public Ministry. After that, it was proceeded to the assessment of the arguments and the counterarguments about the main topic, such as those related to rights to full defense and to contradictory, to the implied powers, to the alleged exclusive competence of the police to investigate criminal offenses, and, finally, to the absence of legality and to the systematic interpretation of the Federal Constitution of 1988.