This research sheds light on discursive strategies of defense speeches given by the attorneys during the trial hearings of the Ângela Diniz (1979) and Mari Ferrer (2020) cases. It is our objective to compare how such speeches evaluate the lives of these women under an ideological prism, permeated by beliefs and power relations concerning social life and the legal sphere. Thus, we seek the bases and traces that update and (re-)entextualize a moralizing discourse on women which aims at blaming the victim. The data used for this research are public and were generated from the transcripts and audio of the Praia dos Ossos podcast episode O Jugamento, produced by Rádio Novelo and available on their website; and the video of the Mari Ferrer case trial, available on YouTube. This work is supported by recent (in-)disciplinary studies of Applied Linguistics (AL) that treat discourse beyond the text, as something that can be understood as action and that generates, projects and/or reverberates effects in society. The theoretical-methodological design of this research is qualitative, drawing on the socio-constructionist perspective and on post-modern studies of Discourse Analysis in order to investigate the effects of discourse on social life, on the (co-)construction of relationships and actions through discursive practices situated in a social and spatiotemporal context. At a micro-discursive level, the analysis of lexical-grammatical choices is based on the Appraisal System, pointing out how power relations, beliefs and social values operate in discourse.