The death of petista militant Marcelo Arruda, shortly after 2 pm on Thursday (13), was defined after a trial at the Jury Court divided into three days, with more than 25 hours of speeches of accusers, witnesses, lawyers and Judge.
Guaranho was sentenced to 20 years in prison in a closed regime and left the scene in a military police car. Taken to the Public Prison of Curitiba, was at the scene for about two hours and then went to the CMP (Penal Medical Complex), where he spent the night.
Celebrated by the victim’s family between cries and shouts of “Marcelo, gift!”, The jury’s decision had a partial turnaround the next day. His defense obtained an injunction at the Paraná Court of Justice, on Friday afternoon (14), authorizing the electronic monitoring, due to the physical conditions of the former criminal police.
At the trial, Pamela Silva, the civil police officer who was Marcelo’s companion, was one of the first to arrive at court on the morning of the 11th. From Foz do Iguaçu, in the west of Paraná, Marcelo’s family stayed in the capital day before.
Marcelo’s two oldest sons, Heitor, 18, and Leonardo, 29, from his first marriage, followed everything inside the jury. The youngest, 9 and 2 years old, did not enter the building. They said goodbye to her mother, Pamela, just before the jury began and stayed with her grandmother.
“I can’t let things fall. I have two kids who completely depend on me. We go with pain, but move on,” Pamela told the report right after the hug on the kids, who came back there only on Thursday, when the Family left the court satisfied with the outcome.
Even shot by Guaranho, Marcelo fired at the then criminal policeman, who, lying on the floor, also took kicks. Today with projectiles still housed in the body, he uses walking crutches and says he takes medicine routinely for pain.
During his speech to the jurors, on Wednesday (12) at night, Guaranho responded to a script of defense questions and, in the dynamics with his own lawyer, one of the strategies was to emphasize physical sequelae.
Soon after, he also responded to the questions of the judges, made in writing. Four women and three men were part of the sentence council, defined by lot. But Guaranho chose not to answer the questions of the prosecutors.
Another strategy was to claim that he only shot Marcelo because he thought he would be attacked. “It was shooting or being shot. I didn’t think,” Guaranho told the jury. “They accused me of wanting to kill Marcelo for politics. But if he hadn’t come with the firearm, I wouldn’t shoot him, whatever party it was. It was a fatality,” he continued.
The defense also tried to take the issue of party divergence. Guaranho told the jurors that he never had a quarrel with anyone because of politics. Admitting that he turned on the sound with the songs of Jair Bolsonaro’s campaign as he approached Marcelo’s party, he added that it was a “joke”, “certainly an idiocy”.
But the jurors maintained the qualifier of murder for futile reasons, for mere party divergence. In the sentence read by Judge Mychelle Pacheco Cintra Stadler, she explains that “the political antagonism witnessed in Brazil is not unknown in recent years”, but that Guaranho’s political intolerance has allowed a “negative valuation” in the penalty.
“Political intolerance, that is, does not accept that the other has different political preferences of their own, reveals intolerant trait of the accused’s personality, as well as selfish and egocentric, disrespectful of the opinion and position of the other,” says the sentence, 16 pages.
The judge also recalled in the sentence that the crime generated the sanction last year of a law in Paraná that establishes July 9 as the State Day of fighting police intolerance and promoting democratic tolerance.
Some local PT leaders followed moments of the trial, such as Federal Deputy Tadeu Veneri, alongside Pamela while reading the sentence.
Guaranho family members also accompanied the trial, but did not give press interviews at the scene. Guaranho’s wife, Francielle da Silva, was among the witnesses listed by the defense, but in the end she was dismissed. Nine witnesses gave testimony in total over the three days.
Guaranho’s testimony, with all its version exposed to the jurors, generated strangeness among those who had listened to the defendant’s lawyers to mention earlier about an alleged lack of memory of the former criminal police over the day of the crime.
Guaranho throughout the process. Last year, lawyer Samir Mattar Assad took over the case. On the eve of the jury, however, the defense team had another member: Ércio Quaresma, a lawyer from Minas Gerais known for enjoying acting in cases of great repercussion, such as the defense of goalkeeper Bruno and accused of the murder of. He was the one who captained Guaranho’s defense in the jury plenary, in heated clashes with prosecutors Roberta Franco Massa and Ticiane Pereira.
Guaranho in person accompanied his trial over the three days and spoke to the ear with his lawyers often. He also did not look out of the big screen, positioned above and just behind his chair, when a memory video of Marcelo was shown by the prosecutors, to the sound of song of America.
The video brought photos of Marcelo with family and friends, as well as records of his union and partisan work. “Being someone’s love is also a political act,” said prosecutor Ticiane Pereira before passing the video. Marcelo’s relatives went to tears with the tribute and had to leave the place for a moment.
The message given by prosecutor Lucas Cavini Leonardi (“is a very well given message that those who commit a crime for being intolerant will pay and will pay dearly”) had a change of scenario on Friday in the decision of Judge Gamaliel Seme Scaff, Paraná TJ, responsible for granting house arrest to Guaranho.
“The patient is still very weakened and with difficulty moving due to the disease and injuries that affect him, so, for the moment, it is unlawful that his house arrest will not endanger society or the compliance with the criminal law at risk. “He justified.
