STF begins to judge 200 more denounced by 8/1 with Moraes’ favorable vote

Minister Alexandre de Moraes, of the Federal Supreme Court (STF), opened the virtual plenary session that judges the second batch of denounced by the Attorney General’s Office (PGR), in the early hours of this Tuesday (25), voting in favor of making defendants 200 people for alleged involvement in the acts of January 8, in Brasilia.

The new wave of defendants joins the first 100 who had the trial concluded on Monday night (24) and who became defendants after the majority of ministers voted in favor. Only ministers Nunes Marques and André Mendonça disagreed with the rapporteur.

In inquiries judged this Tuesday (25) that judge the intellectual authors of the acts (4921) and the executors of the demonstration that culminated in the invasion and depredation of the headquarters of the Three Powers (4922), Moraes claims that the PGR has proven the practice of “multitudinous crimes”, that is, those committed by a large number of people with a “subjective bond” of action by “imitation or suggestion”.

“There is no doubt, therefore, that in the acts of January 8, 2023, all acted in a concurrence of people, united by the subjective bond for the accomplishment of the common work, and should be strictly responsible for their actions”, said the minister who he is also rapporteur for investigations at the STF.

Moraes explained that this stage of the process is restricted to the initiation of criminal proceedings “about the existence of a minimum evidentiary support that evidences the materiality of the crime and the presence of reasonable evidence of authorship, not being present the hypotheses of rejection or summary acquittal”.

If the complaints are accepted, the accused become defendants, and the process will be initiated. In these cases, material evidence and testimony from defense and prosecution witnesses will be collected. Afterwards, the court will still have to decide whether to condemn or acquit whoever is prosecuted, a measure that does not have a specific deadline to occur.

And he again cited in the vote the investigation of agents with privileged jurisdiction who would also be involved in the acts, such as federal deputies Clarissa Tércio (PP-ES), André Fernandes (PL-CE), Sílvia Waiãpi (PL-AP), Coronel Fernanda (PL-MT) and Cabo Gilberto Silva (PL-PB).

The reporting minister of the investigations mentioned, in one of them, that those denounced for incitement to acts would have been associated with the crimes “through a stable and permanent structure set up in front of the Headquarters of the Brazilian Army based in the country’s capital, with the criminal desires of the other co-authors, in order to abruptly change the current regime and the rule of law, to encourage ‘the Armed Forces to take power’ and the population, to subvert the political and social order, also generating animosities between the Armed Forces and republican institutions”.

As a result, those cited in inquiry 4921 become defendants for the crimes of incitement to crime and criminal association (see full text), while those covered by inquiry 4922 were charged with crimes of criminal association, violent abolition of the Democratic State of Law, coup State, damage and damage qualified as violence to the person or serious threat and use of flammable substance against the property of the Union, in addition to destroying, rendering useless or deteriorating property specially protected by law (see in full).

Link with “fake news” surveys

The minister also repeated in his votes the link between the inquiries related to the acts of January 8 with two others that are already being processed by the STF and investigate the so-called “fake news” and “the practice of various criminal offenses by digital militias that attack the Democratic State of Right”. The inquiries, he says, involve Senator Flávio Bolsonaro (PL-RJ) and federal deputies Otoni de Paula (MDB-RJ), Cabo Júnio do Amaral (PL-MG), Carla Zambelli (PL-SP), Bia Kicis (PL -DF), Eduardo Bolsonaro (PL-SP), Filipe Barros (PL-PR), Luiz Phillipe Orleans e Bragança (PL-SP), Guiga Peixoto (PSC-SC) and Eliéser Girão (PL-RN).

“Thus, there is no doubt about the competence of this Federal Supreme Court to analyze this complaint and, eventually, if received, to prosecute and judge subsequent criminal proceedings, as it is evident that there is a connection between the conduct attributed in this complaint and those investigated in the broader scope of the referred procedures involving investigated with jurisdictional prerogative in this Supreme Court”, he noted in another excerpt.

Those denounced in this phase were arrested on the same day as the acts and on the following, in the camp set up in front of the Army Headquarters, in Brasília, and remain detained in the penitentiary system of the Federal District. In all, the PGR has already presented 1,390 formal accusations in the investigations, 239 of which are related to the core of executors, 1,150 in the core of initiators and one in the core that investigates the alleged omission of public authorities in the episode.

There are also two more investigations under way at the STF regarding the acts of January 8, involving the alleged financiers (4920) and State authorities who would have been responsible “by improper omission” (4923), according to Moraes.

The accusations against these 200 defendants are analyzed in the virtual plenary, in which ministers enter their votes in an electronic system, until May 2nd. This is the second judgment after the complaints presented to the Court by the Attorney General’s Office (PGR), and the expectation is that the other Justices of the Court will follow Moraes’ vote.