Plea bargaining in white collar: analysis of the judiciary’s discourse in the Mensalão’s case

Abstract

In the present article, we shall analyze the Supreme Court Justices’ votes in the criminal case popularly known as “Mensalão”, aimed at studying how the plea bargaining institute is described in the judicial discourse, as a human rights guarantee, and what the found dispersions reveal about this discoursive formation. In the first section, we describe multiple approaches on the white collar criminality, in order to link this particular sort of criminality with the plea bargaining institute. In the second section, our theoretical assumptions and backgrounds are clarified, departing from Foucault’s “Archaeology of Knowledge” and discourse studies methodology, understanding that the units of analysis must be derived from the description of dispersions, in which the text is conceived as a materialization of the discourse. The second part is dedicated to the discoursive analysis itself. In the third section, the plea bargaining is approached as a benefit to the defendants who cooperate, demonstrating that the special treatment is not uniformly described, but depends on the context. In the forth section, the benefits of the institute to the State are emphasized, clarifying how relevant the plea bargaining is considered by the judicial discourse. In the fifth section, we approach the probation value provided by the plea bargaining, explaining that the defendants testimonies are considered unreliable evidence. In the conclusion, we balance the dispersion found in the judicial discourse towards the plea bargaining institute, in order to demonstrate some of the guidelines of the analyzed discoursive formation.