Justices Alexandre de Moraes and Dias Toffoli, of the Federal Supreme Court (STF), voted today (18th), in Brasília, to open criminal proceedings and make 100 defendants accused of the coup acts of January 8th of this year, when the buildings of Congress Nacional, the Supreme Court and the Planalto Palace were invaded and depredated by vandals.
The first 100 trials related to anti-democratic acts began exactly 100 days after the crash in Praça dos Três Poderes. The analyzes began at 00:00 this Tuesday (18) and are expected to last until 23:59 next Tuesday (24), in the virtual plenary, a modality in which ministers deposit their votes electronically, without in-person deliberation.
The surveys – of number 4921 It is 4922 – are public and can be followed by anyone, on the Supreme portal, without the need for any type of registration.
Another virtual session has already been scheduled by Minister Rosa Weber, president of the STF, to start on April 25, with another batch of defendants. It is expected that all complaints will be considered within three months.
In all, the PGR has filed 1,390 complaints so far, all focused on the perpetrators and people accused of inciting the acts. According to the STF, priority is being given to people who are still imprisoned as a result of coup acts. At the moment, 86 women and 208 men are still incarcerated in the Federal District penitentiary system.
Vote
So far, Minister Dias Toffoli has been the first to fully accompany the rapporteur, without submitting a written vote in all cases. The other ministers have not yet voted. The expectation at the Supreme Court is that the complaints are all accepted, given the flagrantly illegal nature of the conduct.
In general, Moraes presented two types of vote, one against 50 people in the investigation against the perpetrators of violent acts and another against another 50 people in the investigation against those who incited violence. In both texts, however, the reporting minister used the same words to emphasize the criminal character of those who attack democracy.
For the minister, “conducts and demonstrations that have the clear purpose of controlling or even annihilating the strength of critical thinking, indispensable to the democratic regime, are unconstitutional, as well as those that intend to destroy it, together with its republican institutions, preaching violence, arbitrariness, disrespect for the separation of Powers and fundamental rights, in short, pleading for tyranny, arbitrariness, violence and the breach of republican principles, as verified by the criminal manifestations now imputed to the accused”.
Moraes described the conduct of all those accused as “extremely serious”, since their ultimate objective was to abolish State Powers. Such conducts are well typified in the Brazilian Penal Code, he pointed out.
“There will not be a Democratic State of Law without State Powers, independent and harmonious among themselves, as well as provision of fundamental rights and instruments that enable the inspection and perpetuity of these requirements; consequently, the conduct on the part of the accused proves to be very serious and, at least in this preliminary analysis, corresponds to the primary precepts established in the designated articles of our Penal Code”, wrote the minister.
Indictment
In one of the processes, which deals with people arrested in the camp in front of the Army Headquarters, in Brasília, on January 9, the defendants were accused by the Attorney General of the Republic (PGR) of crimes of inciting the Armed Forces against the constitutional powers and criminal association (art. 286. sole paragraph) and criminal association (art. 288), both of the Penal Code.
In another case, concerning the perpetrators of the coup acts, most of them arrested in the act on January 8, the PGR charged the crimes of armed criminal association (art. 288, sole paragraph), violent abolition of the Democratic State of Law (art. 359-L), coup d’état (art. 359-M), damage qualified by violence and serious threat, with the use of a flammable substance, against the property of the Union and with considerable damage to the victim (art. 163, sole paragraph, I, II, III and IV), all of the Penal Code.
The latter were also charged with the crimes of deterioration of listed heritage (Law 9.605/1998, art. 62, I), with material competition (art. 69, captionof the Penal Code) and contest of people (art. 29, captionof the Penal Code).
There are still two other investigations open in the Federal Supreme Court regarding the coup acts of January 8: one that investigates the responsibility of the financiers of such acts and another about the alleged omission of public authorities in the episode. In these, there was still no complaint filed by the PGR.
defenses
The defendants’ defenses had until 11:59 pm yesterday (17) to send oral support against the accusations. In general, the lawyers raised several preliminary issues in an attempt to annul the cases.
One of the main complaints was the incompetence of the Supreme Court to judge people without jurisdiction in court. Lawyers and public defenders argue that their clients should be judged by the first instance of Federal Justice.
Moraes rejected the argument, stating that the conduct of all those accused is associated with other people investigated for anti-democratic acts, including federal deputies, which attracts the competence of the STF in the case, as provided for in the Code of Criminal Procedure and the jurisprudence of the court itself.
Defenders of the Union and lawyers pointed out as the main violation of the fundamental rights of the defendants the fact that the PGR had presented complaints with the same texts, without specifying the conduct of each subject. That, by itself, should be enough to conclude that the complaint was inept, they argued.
“This is a generic complaint, in which the same conduct is attributed to more than 1,400 investigated. For the complaint to be valid, there should be an individualization of the conduct of each investigated person”, said the lawyer Tanielli Telles de Camargo Padoan, for example.
“The PGR describes the same conduct, attributing to everyone the same exposure of the alleged criminal facts, with only the name, CPF (Individual Taxpayer Registration) and address being changed”, he argued.
The rapporteur also dismissed the argument, stating that it is what the doctrine calls multitudinous crimes, in which many people commit the same violations, which in itself is an obstacle to the detailed individualization of conduct, at least at the time of filing the complaint.
“In crimes of this nature, the detailed individualization of conduct encounters insurmountable barriers due to the collective nature of the conduct, there being no doubt, however, that everyone contributes to the result, since it is a joint action, perpetrated by numerous agents, directed at the same end”, wrote the minister.
