摘要：An individual’s right to remain silent and to not contribute with anything to their own incrimination represents a basic exigency for the carrying out of a fair trial, despite the fact that the right to not testify against one’s self is not expressly guaranteed by the Constitution. International conventions and laws implicitly result from this as a right valorised in the process of communication under different forms, some of them regulated under the law. Thus, the right to silence may not be considered as an absolute right and, in order to check whether it is accepted so that the courts may draw conclusions from the silence of the accused person, one must verify the circumstances of the case. Despite the right to silence, a person suspected of an illicit deed is free to answer or not the questions addressed to them, as long as they consider this as serving their interests or not.
