Supreme orders the release of convicted homicide due to excessive pre -trial detention

With successive resources, the maximum period of two years for pre -trial detention was exceeded. The decision of liberation divided the judges.

The Supreme Court of Justice ordered, this month, the Immediate Liberation of Licínio Monteiro18, convicted of involvement in José Ferreira’s deadly stabbing in February 2023, leaving a bar in Vila Nova de Famalicão.

The decision was justified by Excessive time in pre -trial detention and points to an illegality in maintaining the coercion measure. The vote was taken by majority, with two votes overdue, says.

Licínio Monteiro, arrested in March 2023, was initially convicted in June 2024 by the Guimarães Court to four years and four months in prison for homicide in attempted form and aggression. However, the Court of Appeal aggravated, in February this year, the penalty for seven years in prison, discounting six months based on the amnesty decreed on the occasion of Pope Francis’ visit. His cousin, Nelson Monteiro, who also participated in the attack and, according to the accusation, struck the deadly stab, was sentenced to 12 years in prison for consummated murder.

However, the process dragged on with successive resourcespreventing the final judgment of the sentence. It was this delay that led the defense of Licínio to invoke last March the end of the maximum period of two years for pre -trial detention, requesting the release of the defendant through a request for you have a body. The STJ gave reason to the request, considering that the detention of licinium had become illegal.

Nevertheless, the decision generated division among the magistrates of the Supreme. Two counselors judges argued that the aggravation of the sentence should have automatically extended the period of pre -trial detention, which is why they voted against the release of the young man.

The case is complex and is still involved in uncertainties. During the trial, Licínio and Nelson, both minors at the time of the facts, They accused each other to have been stabbed who killed José Ferreira, 32, and left another 31 man, seriously injured. According to the court, the attack was motivated by provocations inside a bar involving a young woman and a broken glass. Outside, the confrontation climbed to the persecution and stabbing of the victims, one of whom died shortly after in the hospital.

Nelson’s conviction was not consensual either. In the judgment of the list of Guimarães, the judge judge Pedro Cunha Lopes voted due, defending acquittal for lack of unequivocal proof on whom the fatal stab has broken down, given the absence of witnesses and the contradictory versions of the two defendants.

In addition to the prison sentence, Nelson Monteiro was sentenced to pay 171 390 euros compensation to the parents of the deadly victim.