The Federal Supreme Court (STF) has precedents in the recent past of authorizing house arrest for advanced and health -problems politicians. The two circumstances are also part of the argument that former President Jair Bolsonaro’s defense intends to take to the Court to prevent him from serving his sentence, 27 years and three months old, after conviction for attempted coup d’état last week.
Still during the trial, lawyer Paulo Bueno argued that the former president has a “very delicate health situation” and said he intended to request the execution of the sentence on a home regime. Since then, Bolsonaro has been to DF Star hospital twice. Last weekend, he was authorized by the Supreme Court to perform tests, which detected an anemia and “residual image of recent pneumonia”. On Tuesday, he returned to the unit after presenting crisis of sobs and vomiting and was detected skin cancer.
The decisions in which the Supreme Court granted house arrest to condemned politicians occurred generally when they were already in jail, complying with determinations of lower instances. The situation differs from Bolsonaro, whose case is already analyzed by the court itself. In a recent case, more similar to Bolsonaro’s, former President Fernando Collor went to sleep for six nights in a Maceió prison before the STF, who had sentenced him to prison, to admit the serving of the sentence at home.
In Collor’s case, the arrest decree occurred in April 2025, after Minister Alexandre de Moraes, rapporteur of the case, rejected an appeal presented by the defense of the former president. Collor had been sentenced in May 2023 to eight years and ten months in prison for passive corruption and money laundering, in a Lava-Jato complaint about bribes in BR Distribuidora contracts, a former Petrobras subsidiary.
In the appeals presented to the Court after the conviction, Collor’s defense had already mentioned the former president’s advanced age-who turned 70 in 2019-but only to claim a possible prescription of the crimes attributed to him. The first demonstration by house arrest occurred on the same day Collor was arrested in Alagoas. At the time, the defense claimed that he suffered from Parkinson’s disease, sleep apnea and bipolar disorder.
Moraes initially asked the direction of the Baldomero Cavalcanti prison, to which Collor was sent by the minister, if he was “total conditions to deal with the health” of the former president. In response to Moraes, the unit’s doctor said that Collor’s health conditions were “subject to treatment and follow -up within the prison system”, but it would be necessary to observe the “advanced age and the possible worsening in their framework for their report of psychiatric disorder”.
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Recent trips from Bolsonaro to the hospital
April 13. Bolsonaro underwent surgery at the DF Star in Brasilia to clear part of the gut and abdominal wall reconstruction. The procedure lasted 12 hours. The doctors explained that “intestinal obstruction was the result of a small intestine fold that hindered intestinal transit.”
August 16. Last month, already under house arrest, the former president returned to DF Star, for a series of exams. After almost five hours, a medical report reported that there was persistence of esophagitis and gastritis, as well as “residual image” of recent pulmonary infections. Doctors indicated the need for continuous treatment.
September 14. Bolsonaro left house arrest under strong escort to remove eight skin lesions in the same hospital. The medical report also pointed to anemia, and the tomography showed residual image of recent pneumonia. He received iron replacement and must follow in the treatments of hypertension and reflux.
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Res judicata
After asking Collor’s defense documents to better detail the former president’s health condition, Moraes authorized, six days after prison, that he would serve the rest of the sentence at his residence. For jurists heard by the globe, the tendency is for Bolsonaro’s defense to try to anticipate the request for a home regime. Compliance with the sentence only begins after the “res judicata”, that is, when the Supreme understands that there are no more appropriate resources.
“The defense will probably make statement embargoes, perhaps try infringing embargoes, and after all this we will have the final judgment.” Prior to the issuance of a sentence guide, the defense may claim to the Court to evaluate the possibility of house arrest, on the grounds of health commitment – explains lawyer Daniel Kakionis Viana, professor of criminal law and criminal procedural at Cruzeiro do Sul.
The legislation provides for two hypotheses that allow decree of house arrest. The first of these is to replace pre -trial detention – that is, for people who have been arrested before the conviction – and applies to defendants over 80 years or who are “extremely weakened due to severe illness.” The second case goes for convicted of the open regime, which may ask to sleep in their own residence as long as they are “over 70” and “affected by serious illness”.
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The Supreme Court has already applied the legislation in question to cases such as Bolsonaro, who is sentenced to sentence initially in closed regime, ie, fully within a prison unit. In 2018, for example, the then president of the Court, Minister Dias Toffoli, granted house arrest to former federal deputy Paulo Maluf, who had been arrested in December of the previous year after conviction for corruption.
At the time, Toffoli mentioned that Maluf, “86 years old, goes through serious problems related to his health in jail, in the face of numerous and serious pathologies”, according to documents presented by the defense. The minister considered that although Maluf did not fit as a preventive or open prisoner, there was “extraordinary situation authorizing his humanitarian house arrest.”
Subsequently, in early 2022, the Supreme Court granted Conditional Freedom to Maluf, understanding that he had already served more than one third of the sentence and had no “serious misconduct” during the conviction.
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The Supreme Court also applied the benefit of house arrest to Lava-Jato targets that were preemptively arrested. One of these cases was that of the former president of the Rio Legislative Assembly, Jorge Picciani, arrested at the end of 2017 and benefited by an STF habeas corpus in early 2018. At the time, the court responded to Picciani’s defense argument, which cited the fact that the former deputy was “operated by malignant tumor” shortly before his arrest and still needs “postoperative treatment”. Picciani would die in May 2021.
Pandemic factor
The COVID-19 pandemic also encouraged authorization decisions to comply with the sentence on a home regime, which benefited politicians convicted of various crimes. In March 2020, a resolution signed by the then Chairman of the National Council of Justice (CNJ), Minister Dias Toffoli, advised that the courts would re -raise cases of “preventive arrests that have exceeded 90 days” due to the risk of prisoners and the recommendation of social isolation in the pandemic.
One of the beneficiaries was former deputy and former mayor Eduardo Cunha, who obtained authorization from the Federal Court of Paraná, still in March, to be transferred to the home regime. Cunha had been sentenced in the second instance to 14 years and six months in prison, and although the case had not been res judicata, he was serving a sentence in Bangu 8 due to an order of pre -trial detention.
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At the time, Judge Gabriela Hardt, responsible for the cases of Car Wash at the 13th Federal Court of Paraná, attended the argument that Cunha was “vulnerable to the risk of contamination, considering her age and fragile health”, aggravated by a “anemia framework”. The former deputy had undergone surgery at the Copa Star hospital in Rio.
In 2021, Cunha was able to nullify his house arrest, arguing that he was still awaiting the judgment of appeals and that his release had no risks to the progress of the process. Subsequently, the defense of the former deputy managed to overthrow his convictions.
