05/31/2024 – 21:03
The 7th Chamber of Criminal Law of the Court of Justice of São Paulo rejected an appeal in which lawyer Regina Marcia Cabral Neves tried to reverse her sentence to one year and seven months in prison, in an initial semi-open regime, for slander, defamation and insult to a first degree judge. Regina was sentenced after filing a petition signing as a ‘lawyer’ and calling Rafael Vieira Patara a ‘magistrate’.
The judges did not even analyze the content of the lawyer’s requests. They understood that Regina’s appeal was not admissible since she did not pay the legal costs when appealing to the state court. The ruling was published on the 8th.
Until the publication of this text, the report sought contact with the lawyer, but without success. The space is open for demonstrations.
The sentence that Regina was trying to overturn was signed on February 27th by the court of the 1st Court of Itanhaém. At the time, the lawyer had her prison sentence replaced by two restrictions on her rights: paying five minimum wages to the judge and providing services to the community (one hour of work per day of conviction). In addition, compensation of R$30,000 was imposed to be paid by the lawyer to the judge.
At the center of the imbroglio is a petition that Regina filed in the Itanhaém court after judge Rafael gave an unfavorable decision to her in an eviction action.
Judge Paulo Alexandre Rodrigues Coutinho understood that, after Rafael gave such a sentence, his honor began to be attacked by the lawyer. According to the magistrate, Regina falsely attributed to the other judge, the ‘practice of an act against the provision expressed in law to satisfy the author’s interest in the main deed’, an alleged crime of malfeasance. Furthermore, the lawyer also accused Rafael of the alleged crime of procedural fraud and embezzlement.
“Slander consists of imputing to someone, implicitly or explicitly, even if reflexively, a certain criminal fact, known to be false. The agent, to this end, can use words, gestures or writing. There is slander when the imputed fact never occurred – falsehoods that fall on the fact – or, when the event is real, the person points out that it was not the author – falsehood that falls on the authorship of the fact”, he explained.
According to the judge, the lawyer ‘offended the vernacular and imputed five defamatory facts’ to Rafael. She called the order given by that judge a ‘decision’ and a ‘guess’. She referred to the judge as a ‘maugistrate’ and alleged that he ‘put the judiciary into question’.
“It is inconceivable if any type of fallacy is demonstrated that contradicts the lawyer’s intention to discredit the judge’s competence and professional suitability. The expression she used, by attributing the word ‘maugistrado’ to the victim in a pejorative way, went far beyond the limits of legitimate criticism”, said Paulo Alexandre when analyzing the case.
The judge argued that the lawyer has the right to express her ideas and opinions, ‘no matter how absurd they may be’, but, in this case, she ended up ‘Machiavellianly’ using the right to freedom of expression and the exercise of her profession to achieve the honor of Rafael.
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