A PGR (Attorney General’s Office) appealed the decision of the First Class than . The appeal was presented through a motion for clarification, an instrument used to remedy omissions and contradictions in judicial decisions.
The ruling contested by the deputy prosecutor Elizeta Maria de Paiva understood that compulsory retirement with a punitive nature lost constitutional support after the 2019 Pension Reform. As a result, the Panel determined that, in serious cases, magistrates are subject to loss of office.
One of the points of the appeal concerns the competence to judge these actions. The Panel’s decision indicated that, when the conclusion of loss of position comes from the CNJ (National Council of Justice), the action must be proposed directly to the STF.
The PGR disagrees. For the Prosecutor’s Office, the Constitution gives the Supreme Court the power to prosecute and judge actions against the CNJ, and not against the investigated magistrate. Therefore, an action for loss of position would be proposed against the judge himself, which, according to the PGR, would remove the original jurisdiction of the STF.
Another argument from the Prosecutor’s Office is that the model adopted by the Panel may compromise the right to a double degree of jurisdiction. If the action already begins in the STF, the judge may lose his position in a single trial, with no effective possibility of review by another instance.
The PGR also maintains that this arrangement threatens lifetime tenure, a constitutional guarantee that guarantees judges stability in office as a prerequisite for functional independence.
The resource also points out inaccuracy in the use of the expression “serious infractions” as grounds for loss of office. For the Prosecutor’s Office, the sanction must be specifically provided for in law, and not derive from a “generic judgment” about the seriousness of the conduct.
Understand
Dubbed by critics as “reward-punishment”compulsory retirement removed the judge from his duties in the event of misconduct, but guaranteed him the receipt of benefits proportional to the length of service.
When debating the matter in May this year, the First Panel of the STF rejected an appeal presented by the Attorney General’s Office and maintained a decision by the minister Flavio Dino who understood that the 2019 Pension Reform removed from the Constitution the possibility of compulsory retirement being applied as the maximum punishment.
In that trial, Dino stated that compulsory retirement “It’s a punishment that doesn’t punish” and said that the sanction transfers to the taxpayer the cost of the penalty applied to the judge.
With the new interpretation endorsed by the STF and now regulated by the CNJ, The maximum punishment for serious misconduct is loss of position.
