The eyewitness identification evidence and its racial (im)pacities in criminal proceedings: an empirical analysis of robbery cases in the city of Salvador (2021–2022)
Black body; eyewitness identification; institutional racism; criminal procedure; incarceration
Black body; eyewitness identification; institutional racism; criminal procedure; incarceration This doctoral thesis investigates the racial impacts of eyewitness identification evidence in criminal proceedings, based on the analysis of robbery cases adjudicated in the city of Salvador, Brazil, between 2021 and 2022. Developed from a racially critical theoretical perspective and situated within the field of Law and Race Relations, the research employs a mixed methodology—both quantitative and qualitative—combining statistical and documentary analysis to examine how various illegal identification practices substantially contribute to the wrongful conviction of Black individuals. A total of 308 criminal cases were examined to identify how identification procedures are conducted in the pre-trial and trial phases, as well as their repercussions throughout the criminal process. The findings reveal the persistence of unlawful and racially selective practices in which Blackness is construed as a “hyperavailable body” legitimizing the operations of the criminal justice system in defense of society. The empirical analysis demonstrates that, under the guise of neutrality, the criminal justice system reproduces institutional pacts of whiteness that sustain the mass incarceration of the Black population. The study concludes that eyewitness identification, far from being a purely legal and technical mechanism for establishing authorship, constitutes an expression of the institutional and (neo)colonial racism that permeates the Brazilian criminal process, underscoring the need for an epistemological and normative reconfiguration of such evidence from a substantively antiracist perspective.