Rio: Accused of killing cameraman in protest go to jury – 12/12/2023 – Power

The two accused of the death of cameraman Santiago Andrade during a demonstration in 2014 will be tried this Tuesday (12) by a popular jury in Rio de Janeiro almost ten years after the crime.

Fabio Raposo Barbosa and Caio Silva de Souza were charged with triple homicide – for a base motive, inability to defend the victim and use of an explosive – and for the independent crime of explosion.

The process had been practically at a standstill for almost three years, awaiting the search for the full images recorded by Santiago and, mainly, the delay by ICCE (Instituto de Criminalística Carlos Éboli) in sending an opinion on the investigation material.

The trial date was set in June and the defendants’ defense is still trying to postpone the jury session.

Santiago died after being hit in the head by a firecracker while covering, on TV Bandeirantes, a demonstration in Central do Brasil in February 2014. In Rio de Janeiro, the series of protests lasted from June 2013 to July 2014 , the month of the World Cup final.

The ruling — sending the case to the jury — was reversed by the defense of the accused in the second instance. Lawyers argued that it was not an intentional crime, which is why the case should be analyzed by a magistrate, and not by jurors. The jury ended up confirmed by the STJ (Superior Court of Justice) and the STF (Supreme Federal Court).

The 3rd Criminal Court even scheduled the session for July 25, 2019, but the trial was suspended at the request of Caio’s defense.

The lawyers stated that TV Bandeirantes had not sent the full images recorded by the victim during its coverage to the Court. The broadcaster then sent a CD, but Caio’s defense said there were only 15 seconds in the video.

In July 2019, TV informed the court that this was the only file still available recorded by Santiago that day.

After insistence from the lawyers, judge Alexandre Abrahão Teixeira stated that “it was clear as sunlight that the material intended by Caio’s defense does not exist”.

After this decision, in May 2020, the case did not proceed to trial.

The Prosecutor’s Office and Caio’s defense presented questions to be answered by ICCE regarding the images sent.

In December 2020, the Public Prosecutor’s Office reminded the judge that the technical police had not yet sent reports on the computers and cell phones seized from the two defendants when they were arrested in 2014.

ICCE then sent a report describing only the physical characteristics of the equipment, without any information about its contents.

The Prosecutor’s Office requested that the extracted data be analyzed. Over these three years, the Court made three orders to send the reports, without a response from the police. The document was only delivered in November.