Appeal tries to annul 27-year sentence, states that Luiz Fux’s vote should prevail and maintains that there was a ‘judicial error’ by Alexandre de Moraes
Former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL) filed this Friday (28) with infringing embargoes at the Federal Supreme Court (STF) to try to reverse his conviction in the case over the attempted coup d’état. He was sentenced by the First Panel to 27 years and 3 months in prison and is serving his sentence in the Federal Police prison in Brasília.
The appeal presented by the defense asks for acquittal and maintains that Minister Luiz Fux’s vote — the only one for acquittal and the nullity of the criminal action — should prevail. The lawyers claim that there was a “judicial error” when Minister Alexandre de Moraes declared the decision final on Tuesday (25), before the deadline for filing the embargoes.
Infringing embargoes are a type of appeal only applicable when there are at least two votes for acquittal in non-unanimous trials. In Bolsonaro’s case, there was only one. The consolidated understanding in the STF is that, under these conditions, the appeal cannot be admitted — and it is up to the rapporteur to reject it summarily. For this reason, the tendency is for Moraes not to accept the embargoes. The defense has already announced that, if this occurs, it intends to appeal through an appeal, as provided for in the Court’s internal regulations.
In the document delivered to the STF, the lawyers state that the decision that brought forward the final and unappealable decision “violates the right to appeal” provided for in the Treaty of São José de Costa Rica and created an “inadmissible exception”, since there was no abuse of the right to appeal nor the presentation of delaying appeals. According to the defense, the judicial secretariat certified the end of the criminal action while the deadline was still running — something that, according to the text, only usually occurs in situations of procedural bad faith, which the lawyers deny.
In addition to the acquittal, the lawyers ask that the case be taken to the STF plenary, which brings together 11 ministers. Since December 2023, however, criminal trials in the Supreme Court have been mandatory in classes, a rule that makes analysis by the plenary unfeasible. The next decisions will be taken by Minister Alexandre de Moraes, responsible for conducting the process and analyzing the admissibility of the embargoes presented by the defense.
