“Mato-te”, “vou-te matar” or “hei-de-te matar”: some notes on the use of verb tenses in Criminal Threat Judgements

Abstract

The threatening offence is legally constituted under specific legal criteria (cf. Hutton, 2021), which differ from what is commonly interpreted as a threatening utterance. Legally, the threat offence must fulfil at least three criteria: i) the provocation of fear or unease in the addressee; ii) the constitution of a future harm; and, finally, iii) “the will of the perpetrator” to carry out the threat (cf. Art. 153 of the Penal Code). The aim of the present investigation was to verify in which linguistic contexts a particular statement is or is not considered to constitute a threat offence, taking into account, among other things, verb tenses – a linguistic category that is fundamental (but not unique) in the characterization of a threat, from a legal point of view. In order to achieve this goal, we collected 38 court decisions regarding threat offences from the Courts of Appeal (Tribunal da Relação) of Porto, Lisbon, Coimbra, Guimarães and Évora. Our analysis showed that the most frequently used verb tense is the Simple Present (with a future value), followed by uses of the periphrastic construction Ir + Infinitivo. The Simple Future, on the contrary, is not a commonly used verb tense. Occurrences of Haver de + Infinitivo are also uncommon, which goes against the initial expectations according to the legal definition. In addition, the presence of other elements in the sentence, such as the frequent occurrence of slang expressions shared by common knowledge (fazer a folha, limpar o sebo, partir os dentes, cortar o pescoço), should be highlighted, for they interfere with the final interpretation of the sentence. Finally, extralinguistic factors, such as the tone of voice and the use of gestures, are also important in determining the conditioning factors specific to each case.