CNJ investigates judge’s omission after prosecutor compares lawyer to bitch in AM hearing; magistrate is the target of 31 investigations on suspicion of misconduct | Amazon

Lawyer accuses prosecutor of calling her a ‘bitch’ during trial in Manaus

The National Council of Justice (CNJ) opened an administrative disciplinary procedure (PAD) to investigate the suspected omission of judge Carlos Henrique Jardim da Silva. The magistrate was presiding over a session at the 3rd Jury Court, in Manaus, when the prosecutor Walber Nascimento compared a lawyer to a bitch and questioned witnesses using profanity and derogatory phrases towards women.

In a hearing on September 12, 2023, the prosecutor referred, more than once, to defense lawyer Catharina de Souza Cruz Estrella as a bitch. “Comparing your excellence to a bitch is, in fact, offensive, but not to your excellence but to the bitch”, said prosecutor Nascimento. Less than one month after the case, he was retired by the Public Ministry from the Amazon.

With his retirement, Nascimento began to receive a full salary, in addition to the benefits that are granted to members of the Public Ministry with the same position.

In a video that circulated on social media at the time, the prosecutor defended himself in court, saying that he did not offend the lawyer identified as Catharina Estrella. To date, the National Public Ministry Council (CNMP) has maintained the retirement, but there is still an appeal (read more below).

The national justice inspector, minister Luis Felipe Salomão, voted to open the PAD because he found evidence that the judge “may have committed an omission by not warning the prosecutor about the use of inappropriate and offensive terms towards women , both when questioning the victim who acted as an assistant to the prosecution, and in dialogues between him and the defense lawyer”.

The Disciplinary Complaint filed ex officio by the National Justice Inspectorate aimed to investigate the conduct of judge Carlos Henrique Jardim da Silva. After listening to the lawyer and the judge, and analyzing the minutes of the hearing, the reporting minister Luis Felipe Salomão pointed out “the existence of reasonable signs of a disciplinary infraction” and voted to open the procedure to the detriment of the judge.

“From the analysis of the elements in the case, it is clear that there is evidence that the magistrate may have committed an omission by not warning the prosecutor about the use, by the prosecutor, of inappropriate and offensive terms to women, both when questioning the victim who acted as an assistant to the prosecution, as well as in dialogues between him and the defense lawyer”, stated the minister.

According to the CNJ, the judge has 31 proceedings before the National Council of Justice, including disciplinary complaints and requests for action, many of them opened by court colleagues and TJ-AM bodies and related to the judge’s conduct.

The opening of the PAD was determined in an ordinance published by the president of the CNJ, minister Luís Roberto Barroso on Friday (26). The decision defines that, during the investigation until the judgment in the plenary of the counselors, judge Carlos Henrique Jardim da Silva will not be removed from his duties at the Court of Justice of Amazonas.

In the previous defense, even during the analysis of the disciplinary complaint, the judge claimed “to have always acted, in the exercise of his functions, in defending the cause of women” and stated that during the debates and oral arguments the prosecutor “used expressions that, If, on the one hand, they express the structural machismo that permeates our society, on the other, unfortunately, we cannot forget that they are intrinsic to the popular vernacular”.

Still according to the judge, it would not be up to him to “restrict the use of these expressions, so that on that occasion he would demand that the member of the Public Prosecutor’s Office refrain from using vulgar language in order to adopt more refined and elegant vocabulary, under penalty of incurring exacerbation of police power, which could even characterize censorship and non-compliance with Parquet’s prerogatives. A stance that, if adopted, could result in the nullity of the act in an odious breach of impartiality”.

Judge Carlos Henrique Jardim da Silva also claimed that he did not immediately realize that the words spoken by the prosecutor could be interpreted as offensive and directed specifically at the defense lawyer, which “denotes that the intensity of the debates and the dynamics of the trial can make it difficult to immediate assessment of the impact caused by the words, highlighting the complexity of these situations”, and that he took all measures to welcome her “given the state of emotional distress in which she found herself, resulting from the insults that were given to her”.

O g1 He tried to contact the judge, but had not received a response until the last update of this report. TJ-AM informed that it will not comment on the matter, since the investigation is carried out by the national body.

Parallel to the CNJ investigation into the judge’s alleged omission, there is another investigation underway at the National Public Ministry Council (CNMP).

In March of this year, the organization maintained the full retirement payment of the Amazonas prosecutor, Walber Nascimento. The monocratic decision [unilateral] by the national inspector of the Public Ministry Ângelo Nascimento Farias da Costa was published on International Women’s Day.

The prosecutor was the target of a disciplinary complaint, but the case was archived after his retirement request. For the lawyer’s defense, the prosecutor used his retirement to get rid of the accusation and avoid a possible dismissal, a situation that would make him lose the right to retire with a full salary of R$42,300.

In a memorandum, the advisor and National Ombudsman of the Public Ministry, Rogério Magnus Varela Gonçalves, stated that considering the existence of the disciplinary procedure, the prosecutor’s retirement request “reports a possible attempt to circumvent the constitutional control competence of the CNMP”.

Lawyer Soraia Mendes, who represents lawyer Catharina Estrella, appealed to the CNMP again since the magistrate Ângelo Nascimento made two monocratic decisions on the case: archiving the case for offense against the prosecutor and denying the appeal that requested the review of the filing of the process.

In a decision last week, the magistrate upheld the decision, but accepted that a new appeal be analyzed and sent the process for free distribution and future analysis by counselors.