The Intermediate Stage and the Guarantee Judge in the Brazilian Criminal Process: an important and insufficient step

Abstract

The Federal Law 13964/2019 amended the Brazilian Code of Criminal Procedure which now includes the preliminary judge, who has jurisdiction for the pre-trial proceedings and the admissibility of the prosecution. Although new in Brazil, this concept is already well known in European countries, such as Portugal and Italy, and in all other Latin American countries, where the Criminal Procedure is developed in three different phases (pre-trial stage, intermediate stage and trial). In these countries, the preliminary judge acts in three fields: pre-trial proceedings, admissibility of the prosecution and the preparation of the trial. Thus, in a comparative methodological proposal, taking as reference the Chilean criminal procedure, this text seeks to verify if in the current Brazilian legislation there is an effective intermediate stage. It is concluded that there is an intermediate step between the criminal investigation and the trial, even if it is partial and limited in relation to the foreign experience.