The majority of ministers of the Federal Supreme Court (STF) voted this Thursday (14) for the conviction of Aécio Lúcio Costa Pereira, the first defendant for the coup acts of January 8. Despite the votes cast, the trial continues to take votes from all ministers and to define which sentence will prevail.
A majority was formed with the vote of minister Luís Roberto Barroso, who sentenced Aécio Pereira to 10 years in prison. Barroso voted to convict Aécio Pereira for four of the five crimes charged by the Attorney General’s Office (PGR): armed criminal ociation, coup d’état, qualified damage due to violence and serious threat and deterioration of listed property.
For the minister, the conduct of attempting to violently abolish the Democratic Rule of Law is included in the crime of coup d’état. Barroso said that the depredation that occurred on January 8 was fueled by a widespread lie about fraud in the counting of the 2022 elections.
“The attempted coup d’état is a reunion with the worst days of our past. Preaching for the return of a military regime is reviving ghosts that haunted the generation of all of us who are here and who lived through difficult times from an institutional point of view” , he stated.
So far, the plenary has three votes for total conviction for the five crimes, which were handed down by Alexandre de Moraes, Cristiano Zanin and Edson Fachin. André Mendonça and Barroso voted to convict for four crimes, and Nunes Marques only condemned for two of them.
Aécio Lúcio Costa Pereira, resident of Diadema (SP), was arrested by the Legislative Police in the Senate plenary. He even published a video on social media during the invasion of the House and remains in prison.
During the first day of the trial, Aécio Pereira’s defense said that the STF’s judgment of the case is “political”. According to the defense, the defendant does not have privileged jurisdiction and should be tried by the first instance. Furthermore, the lawyer refuted the accusation of the defendant’s participation in the execution of the acts.