Brazil: Supreme Court To Rule On Bolsonaro’s Appeal In November
By Felipe Pontes
The first panel of Brazil’s Supreme Court will rule on former President Jair Bolsonaro’s appeal against his 27-year prison sentence for crimes against democracy. The session will be held online from November 7 to 14.
The appeals of six other defendants – all former allies of the ex-president who were considered to be the main instigators of the attempted coup to keep Bolsonaro in power after his electoral defeat in 2022 – will be heard in the same session.
The criminal case in which all were convicted was added to the trial schedule on Tuesday (Oct. 28), after the deadline for filing appeals had expired.
Among the convicted, only Lieutenant Colonel Mauro Cid – Bolsonaro’s former aide-de-camp and whistleblower of the coup plot – did not appeal. Under his sentence, he retained the benefits of his plea bargain, receiving a lighter sentence of two years, and therefore should not serve his sentence in jail.
In an appeal filed Monday (27), Bolsonaro’s lawyers said his defense had been hindered during the trial. One of the reasons was the short amount of time given to the defendants to examine the vast amount of information attached to the case by the Federal Police, which totaled over 70 terabytes of data.
“The defense was not even able to access all of the evidence before the end of the investigation; it did not have the minimum time to review this evidence,” says the appeal signed by Bolsonaro’s defense team, which is led by criminal lawyers Celso Vilardi and Paulo Cunha Bueno.
The other defendants who filed appeals made similar arguments. The defense team for General Walter Braga Netto – former chief of staff and minister of defense, as well as Bolsonaro’s running mate in 2022 – for instance, accused Justice Alexandre de Moraes, rapporteur for the case, of bias and curtailing the defense.
Imprisonment
Only after the motions are tried, therefore, will Justice Moraes be able to determine when Bolsonaro will begin serving his sentence. Given its length, Brazilian law stipulates that he must start serving his sentence in prison.
Exceptions can be made, however, in cases where there is no prison facility capable of providing the necessary care for a convicted person’s illness. In such circumstances, the judge may order house arrest on humanitarian grounds.
As a former president, Bolsonaro is also entitled to stay in a special room, which could be, for example, in a Federal Police facility. As a retired member of the Army, he may also stay in a military facility.
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