Wallace has a three-month prison sentence replaced by a fine – 11/22/2023 – Frederico Vasconcelos

Olympic volleyball champion Wallace Leandro de Souza was sentenced to three months and 15 days in detention, a sentence replaced by a fine of R$20,000.

Federal judge Jorge Gustavo Serra de Macedo Costa, from Belo Horizonte, ruled this Tuesday (21) that the defendant acted with intent by instigating, on the social network Instagram, the crime of murder against President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT).

On January 31st of this year, Wallace was asked by one of his followers if he “would shoot Lula in the face with that 12”. He publicly shared the question, with the caption: “Would anyone do this?” Added an angel emoji [“denotando evidente cinismo na insinuação”, segundo o magistrado] and a poll “so that his various followers could inform whether or not they would carry out the criminal conduct”.

According to the ruling, “this instigation, in the political context established in the country at the time, would easily be capable of inspiring the suggested behavior to migrate from the plane of ideas to the plane of reality.”

“This stimulus expanded due to the sharing of haunting result of the poll, indicating that the majority of the public would carry out the murder of the country’s highest authority, which could encourage the actual commission of the act under the fallacious justification of reflecting the ‘will of the majority'”, the judge ruled. [grifo no original]

“At the time of the events, the nation had just witnessed the violent attacks on the headquarters of the Three Powers of the Republic, which occurred on January 8, 2023, resulting from the nonconformity of part of the population with the presidential election that took place in 2022, a context in which the Political polarization was an incentive for the spread of hate speech, especially on the internet.”

Still according to Jorge Costa, “this entire situation caused great instability on the national scene, so that any spark appeared to be a real threat to social peace.”

“The post in question had, unquestionably, the potential to stimulate or same reinforce possible purpose existing in part of those that were achieved by it, proving to be uncontested that it configured incitement to commit murder of the President of the Republic”.

The defense had claimed that the conduct accused of the accused would be the publication of a third person’s post and that the author of the post would not have been reported.

The judge understood, however, that the questioning had been sent privately, having been directed exclusively to the defendant and made public by him.

Heard by police authorities, Wallace said that he “had no intention of inciting hatred against the person of the president or anyone else, that he had zero intention.” In his sentence, the judge decided that “the alleged lack of intention to incite criminal activity cannot be sustained.”

“From everything that has been established, including the statements made by the defendant himself, it appears that he made the post with full understanding of its content and, knowing the political context he experienced, broad knowledge, and the reach of his posts on social networks, impossible to deny who was aware that his behavior could instigate others to commit criminal acts”.

Aggravating and mitigating factors

The judge had set the base sentence at four months and 15 days in prison. He saw the need to increase the penalty, “bearing in mind that the incitement to the crime of homicide by the highest public authority in the country, the President of the Republic in office, in the post-election period, ultimately undermines the democratic rule of law itself”.

It also considered the chosen route, the social network Instagram, a virtual platform with more than 2 billion active users globally, reaching, on the national scene, around 113 million people.

He also considered that Wallace’s account, “for years a member of the Brazilian team”, had, at the time, around 370 thousand followers”, according to the accused himself.

As mitigating factors, it was recorded that the athlete, the following day, “used his social networks to apologize for the post, registering his repudiation of any kind of violence against the President of the Republic”, in addition to having spontaneously confessed to being the author of the post.

The judge mitigated the sentence by setting it at the legal minimum (3 months and 15 days of detention). If the convicted person refuses to replace the sentence with a fine, he will serve the initial open regime with a custodial sentence.

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