The judge must decide whether the case of military police officer Gisele Alves Santana will be judged by the Jury Court or by the Military Court. São Paulo Military Police lieutenant colonel Geraldo Leite Rosa Neto is accused of killing his wife in February 2026, with a firearm, and of altering the crime scene to simulate suicide. In March, the reporting minister rejected a defense complaint that sought the officer’s release and maintained the incompetence of the Military Justice.
A complaint to the STJ is only admitted in two situations: when a decision invades the jurisdiction that would belong to the Court itself or when it disrespects an understanding already reached by the court in the same case.
In the rapporteur’s opinion, none of these hypotheses apply. According to Reynaldo Soares da Fonseca, the STJ has not yet judged the merits of the criminal action initiated in the original instances. Therefore, there would be no previous decision of the Court that could be disregarded, which rules out the claim. Read the decision (PDF — 97 kB).
GISELE CASE
Military police officer Gisele Alves Santana, 32 years old, was shot in the head on February 18, 2026, in the apartment where she lived with her husband, Lieutenant Colonel Geraldo Leite Rosa Neto, in the Brás region, in São Paulo. Initially, the case was presented as a suicide, but the investigation began to treat it as a suspicious death and, later, as a feminicide.
The capital’s Jury Court received the complaint from the São Paulo Public Ministry against Rosa Neto. The indictment, signed by prosecutors Ingrid Maria Bertolino Braido and Daniela Romanelli da Silva, attributes to the officer the crimes of qualified feminicide, in the context of domestic and family violence, with aggravating factors such as a bad motive and the use of a resource that would have made the victim’s defense difficult, in addition to procedural fraud, due to the alleged alteration of the crime scene.
According to the complaint, messages extracted from the accused’s cell phone indicate a relationship marked by control and possessive behavior. The play describes him as someone with a “toxic, authoritarian and possessive” and maintains that he defended a relationship model in which the man would be the provider and the woman should be “submissive”. For , this set of elements reinforces the accusation of femicide in the context of domestic violence.
The investigation also points out that, in addition to killing his wife, Rosa Neto tried to alter the crime scene to support the suicide version. In March, he was the target of a formal complaint and became a defendant. The case, however, opened a second front of dispute: the definition of who should judge him.
CASE AT STJ
The controversy over the jurisdiction of the case reached the STJ, which will have to decide whether the action will be taken to the common courts, with analysis by the Jury Court, or whether it will be sent to the Military Court. The discussion was open because both the victim and the accused were members of the São Paulo Military Police.
Before that, Geraldo Leite Rosa Neto’s defense had already approached the court. On March 20, Minister Reynaldo Soares da Fonseca rejected a complaint presented by the officer’s lawyers, who asked for the prison to be relaxed and challenged the role of the Military Justice in the case.
