The President of the First Class of (Supreme Federal Court), Minister, marked on September 2 the beginning of the judgment of the central nucleus of the coup plot. Former President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) and seven others are defendants for crimes against democracy.
The trial is expected to last five days. Sessions were summoned on September 2, 3, 9, 10 and 12 for the case analysis.
The dates were defined on Friday (15) after the Minister-Rapporteur Alexandre de Moraes report to Zanin that he is ready to bring the trial of the trial. A statement from the secretary of the first class, Cintia da Silva Gonçalves, informs about the convening of extraordinary sessions for the trial.
The trial is expected to last two weeks, with five days to analyze the case. The trial calendar foresees sessions on September 2 (from 9am to 7pm), September 3 (from 9am to 12pm), September 9 (from 9am to 7pm), September 10 (from 9am to 12pm) and September 12 (from 9am to 7pm).
Defendants are former president (PL), former Navy Commander Almir Garnier, former Justice Minister, former head of the Lieutenant Colonel, former Defense Minister Paulo Sérgio Nogueira and former Chief of the Civil House.
The Federal Deputy (PL-RJ) is also part of the group, but the case against him was partially paralyzed by determination of the Chamber.
The eight defendants were accused by the crimes of coup, attempted abolition of the Democratic Rule of Law, Armed Criminal Association, qualified damage to public heritage and deterioration of the overturned assets.
The maximum penalties are exceeded 40 years in prison.
Judgment begins with reading the report report. In the document, Moraes will rely on details how each stage of the criminal action was, what decisions the Supreme has made and what claim PGR and defendants’ defenses.
Then, the Attorney General of the Republic, Paulo Gonet, will have 1 hour to make his oral support. The defense of Lieutenant Colonel Mauro Cid, the case whistleblower, will be the next to speak out for the same period.
Then each of the defendants’ defenses will have the same time to advocate for the acquittal of the accused. Lawyers will be called in alphabetical order of the accused.
Only after the speech of each part of the process does Minister Alexandre de Moraes present his vote. It has no time limit. He must submit his conclusions for the conviction or acquittal of each of the defendants separately.
The sequence of the votes is defined by the seniority criterion. It will be this order: Flávio Dino, Luiz Fux, Cármen Lúcia and Cristiano Zanin – last to speak for presiding over the board.
The conviction depends on the majority of the votes of the ministers of the First Class.
The jurisprudence in the Supreme defines that the convicts should only comply with their penalties after the final judgment (closure) of the case. This means that even if the defendants are considered guilty, any prison should only occur after the end of the defense’s resources analysis.
The amount of appeals to be presented depends on the vote of the ministers in the trial. If there is divergence, defenses can explore them in more resources. In case of unanimity of condemnation and dosimetry of the penalties, the defendants have a lower margin of maneuver.
The expectation in the Supreme is that appeals must be tried by the end of October. In this scenario, eventual convicts must serve the sentence later this year.
Part of the defendants’ defenses believe, however, that Luiz Fux may ask for views of the case and postpone the trial of the coup plot within 90 days. This mechanism is used when the minister wants more time to analyze the case before presenting his vote.
The dates for the beginning of Bolsonaro’s trial were set by the Supreme two days after the deadline for defendants’ defenses to submit their final allegations.
Bolsonaro’s defense told the Supreme Court that the prosecution (Attorney General of the Republic) of the coup plot is absurd and mixes events to get a conviction without proof.
“There is no way to condemn Jair Bolsonaro based on the evidence produced in the case file, which unfortunately demonstrated that he determined the transition, avoided chaos with truckers and attested to his voters that the world would not end on December 31, that the people would realize that the new government would not do well to the country,” he says.
The defense says that the Federal Police could not find the alleged scammer minutes even though they seized hundreds of cell phones and computers.
In the lawyers’ version, the documents dealing with the attempted coup d’état are only reported by whistleblower Mauro Cid, former Bolsonaro orders.
“The failure in the accusation is profound. It uncovers that this narrative about a decree with diverse prisons existed only in the non-corroborated word of the whistleblower, and displays the emptiness of the presumption that the minutes would have been changed by the former president,” he says.
The team led by lawyer Celso Vilardi argues that the lack of documents in the prosecution of PGR is “also the lack of proof of its change.”
“The mantra of this process already comes here: no one saw, no witness, not even the whistleblower. After all, there is not the alleged draft decree in the file with a ‘wicked’ text providing only the arrest of Minister Alexandre de Moraes,” he adds.
