The Second Panel of the Federal Supreme Court (STF) formed a majority to overturn the preventive detention of former governor of Rio de Janeiro Sérgio Cabral. As a result, the former governor, who has been in prison for six years as a result of Operation Car Wash, will be released and placed under house arrest. The majority of three votes was formed this Friday with the vote of the Dean of the Court, Minister Gilmar Mendes.
The judgment had been taking place since the last 7th in the virtual plenary of the Supreme Court, the system through which ministers cast their votes. Cabral is the only convict from Lava Jato in Rio who was still in jail.
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In his vote, Gilmar stated that the decision does not mean Cabral’s acquittal, but only that no citizen can “remain indefinitely” in precautionary custody. The minister also said that “it is perplexing” that facts that occurred in 2008 and 2009 served as the basis for the arrest in 2016.
“As everything indicates, the maintenance of the precautionary segregation of the accused has served as an anticipation of the sentence, which directly contradicts the jurisprudential orientation established in this Court”, wrote Gilmar.
The ministers analyzed an arrest warrant issued in 2016 by the then judge Sergio Moro, who at the time worked at the Federal Court of Curitiba, within the scope of Operation Lava-Jato. Other preventive arrest warrants against Cabral, in the Federal Court of Rio de Janeiro, have already been overturned.
Most justices followed the vote of Ricardo Lewandowski, the first to disagree with the rapporteur, who considered that the process should not have been judged in the Federal Court of Paraná, but in Rio de Janeiro. “It is clearly concluded that there is no instrumental connection between the imputations made to the patient and the facts generating the territorial competence of the 13th Federal Court of Curitiba”, wrote the minister last week.
The case’s rapporteur, Minister Edson Fachin, voted against the overthrow of Cabral’s prison. For him, “the fact that more than 5 (five) years have passed since the decree of preventive detention does not matter, in itself, the repeal of this more serious measure, since its necessity has still been demonstrated”.
Fachin was accompanied by Minister Nunes Marques, for whom “the need to maintain the precautionary prison is justified in guaranteeing public order, due to the concrete gravity of the crimes, the prominent role of the patient in the complex criminal organization, his demonstrated power of influence in the records and the concrete and reasonable risk of criminal repetition”.
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