The Public Ministry of São Paulo asked the Court that the 13 military police officers involved in the deaths of nine young people at a funk dance in the Paraisópolis neighborhood be taken to a popular jury. 
The case under trial refers to the crime on the night of December 1, 2019, when nine young people who were at a dance funk from DZ7, community of Paraisópolis, in the capital of São Paulo, were killed.
The request was presented by prosecutor Luciana André Jordão Dias in her closing arguments of an evidentiary hearing at the São Paulo Court of Justice. This process only intends to decide whether the police officers will be taken to a popular jury.
The popular jury is a special body of Justice, provided for in the Constitution, with exclusive competence to judge intentional crimes against life. In this type of trial there is the participation of seven jurors, who are selected from the general population, and who will decide whether the defendants are innocent or guilty of the crime.
All 13 military police officers are responding for bodily injuries and triple homicides – a base motive, a resource that made it impossible to defend the victims and a cruel means associated with the common danger.
For the prosecutor, the elements collected during the procedural instruction and investigation demonstrate that the police took the risk of causing deaths, as they closed the roads around the place where the dance was taking place, preventing escape routes. of young people and creating widespread panic. Furthermore, the police allegedly used disproportionate force.
According to the Public Ministry’s statement, the crowd that was at the dance was cornered by the police and pushed into Viela do Louro, a space incompatible with the volume of people present.
The massacre
The massacre occurred on the night of December 1, 2019, during a funk party in Paraisópolis.
The young people murdered were Gustavo Cruz Xavier, Denys Henrique Quirino da Silva, Marcos Paulo de Oliveira Santos, Dennys Guilherme dos Santos Franco, Luara Victoria de Oliveira, Eduardo Silva, Gabriel Rogério de Moraes, Bruno Gabriel dos Santos and Mateus dos Santos Costa. They were between 14 and 23 years old.
At the time of the case, the PM claimed that the agents responded to an attack carried out by criminals who had shot at the vehicles and ran towards the pancadão, as the funk party is known.
The narrative that the corporation supports is that the victims died after being trampled on, a version that is contested by the families.
