IMPUNITY is at the core of the Brazilian political debate. A retrospective look at legal documents and accounts by historians, travelers and chroniclers for references to the application of the death penalty for common crimes (as opposed to political, military and religious offenses) shows that impunity has always been the order of the day in the history of Brazil. Despite the repressive violence, evident at several moments, a constant feature of both Colonial and Imperial periods was the ineffectiveness of the penal law as it was written, made so either by the granting of pardons, the lack of political will or by practical impediments.
