Brazil’s Top Court to Decide on Lula’s Conviction in Curitiba

The plenary of Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court (STF) will decide whether a criminal court in the southern city of Curitiba had jurisdiction to try and convict former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva some three years ago.

The STF plenary will judge the habeas corpus, decided by minister Edson Fachin last March 8, which granted former president Lula his political rights.  Lula was imprisoned for 580 days and banned from running for president in 2018.

Furthermore, in that decision, Fachin recognized the incompetence of the 13th Federal Court of Curitiba to annul four criminal actions against Lula and refer the cases to Brasília.  With political rights recovered, Lula appears in first place in the latest polls of voting intention.

The portal Consultor Jurídico assures that, although consequences linked to the matter prevail, such as Lula’s eligibility and the extension of the verdict to other processes of the deactivated Operation Lava Jato, the discussion turns out to be technical and does not have much room for interpretation.

Fachin’s resolution annulled the sentences, returned to the founder of the Workers’ Party his political rights and the possibility of participating in the race for power in next year’s elections.  According to legal rules, the answer to the question “was the federal court of Curitiba competent to judge the crimes attributed to him?” will be sought in Wednesday’s debate.

The incompetence of the Federal Justice of Curitiba to “judge the improper charges brought against former President Lula was sustained by us since the first written manifestation that we presented in the proceedings, still in 2016,” defense lawyers Cristiano Zanin and Valeska Teixeira indicated on that occasion.

The four actions that left Curitiba would start “from scratch” in the Federal District, but Moro is no longer declared suspect or biased.  The decision is in line with everything that the defense sustains in the last five years of conducting the process.

However, the legal team denounced in a statement, it does not have the power to repair the irreparable damage caused by former judge Sérgio Moro and the Lava Jato prosecutors “to former president Lula, to the justice system and to the democratic rule of law.”