The (Supreme Federal Court) decided this Thursday (5) to validate the increase in the penalty for those who commit crimes against the honor of public officials and the presidents of the Senate, the Chamber of Deputies or the Supreme Court due to their functions.
The trial had been suspended since May 2025 and was reported by the retired minister. The analysis in the plenary at the time sparked a heated debate regarding the differences presented.
The line opened by the minister won. He was accompanied by Kassio Nunes Marques, , , Gilmar Mendes and .
Barroso, André Mendonça, voted along the lines of not differentiating the punishment if the offended party has a public role, except in cases of slander. The president, in turn, defended the total denial of the action.
The action was proposed by the PP, which alleged restriction of freedom of expression in the section of the Penal Code mentioned. The party argued that there would be no reason to increase penalties when the STF itself understands that citizens have the right to criticize public figures.
Flávio Dino argued that the increase in the penalty in these cases means additional protection for the public institution to which the public servant or president of Power is linked.
Gilmar Mendes, in turn, in this Thursday’s session, said that increasing the punishment does not violate the precepts of the Constitution. “The right to communicate freely is inherent to the freedom of human society. However, the repression of excess is not incompatible in the abstract with democracy,” he stated.
Moraes said, in May last year, that “impunity for crimes against honor automatically generates the possibility of aggression, the criminal feels encouraged”.
The Penal Code provides for three types of crimes against honor: slander (attributing to someone the commission of a crime), defamation (attributing a non-criminal fact, but offensive to the reputation) and insult (negative opinions or value judgments that offend someone’s dignity or decorum).
The discussion in the process took place regarding the increase of one third in the penalty for these crimes in the hypothesis of these authorities.
According to the rapporteur’s vote, the aggravation of the sentence is justified only in the case of slander, which he considers to be the only crime against honor that, as it involves the imputation of a crime, represents an effective risk to the exercise of the functions of public servants and agents.
In dissenting, Fachin stated that the Constitution does not provide for an increase in penalties for specific cases that target public agents.
“There is no basis for increasing the penalty when the crime is committed against public agents. In a truly democratic society, the remedy to combat deviations is transparency. Furthermore, it is not difficult to see that from this perspective the exercise of tolerance to negative opinions is more than an exercise by public agents, it is a constitutive part of a democratic society”, he said.
In last year’s discussion, he argued that there was no need to distinguish offenses against public servants, in order to make them more serious than those committed against other citizens. “Calling someone a thief is an opinion about the person. It’s not a specific fact”, Mendonça said.
In that session, Flávio Dino was effusive when rebutting his colleague and said he did not admit being called a thief. “Minister André, for me, it is a serious offense. I do not accept anyone calling me a thief. Because this flexible moral thesis that they invented is the thesis that degrades public service and demoralizes the State”, he said.
After Dino finished speaking, Mendonça added: “If a citizen cannot call a politician a thief…”, to which Dino replied: “And can a Supreme Court minister?”
Mendonça then stated that he was not different from the others and that, if someone called him that, he would answer “for contempt or for a crime with the same penalty as any citizen would have the right to receive compensation in his honor”.
