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lawyers For Brazil former President jair bolsonaro Filed an appeal to reduce his prison sentence for attempted coup after his 2022 election defeat.
In September judges convicted Bolsonaro of attempting to overthrow democracy and sentenced him to 27 years and three months in prison. He has been under house arrest since August.
In an 85-page document sent to Supreme Court In comments shared with The Associated Press on Monday and Tuesday, lawyers said the conviction and sentence involved a “gross injustice.”
The lawyers argued that there were “ambiguities, omissions, contradictions and ambiguities” in the court’s decision.
Bolsonaro has denied any wrongdoing. He was convicted of attempting a coup after losing the 2022 race to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, which prosecutors alleged included a plot to kill Lula. He was found guilty of charges including participation in an armed criminal organization and attempting to violently subvert the democratic rule of law.
In their appeal, lawyers argued that Bolsonaro should not be convicted of organizing a coup and attempting to violently end democracy, on the grounds that the two charges overlap and so the cumulative penalties are unjust.
He also cited Justice Luiz Fux, who was the only dissenting vote on the five-justice panel that convicted Bolsonaro, and argued that even if Bolsonaro had attempted a coup, he “deliberately disrupted the course of events” and did not do so.
Lawyers file motions for clarification, which attempt to correct a flaw in the reasoning of a decision rather than change it.
Joao Pedro Padua, a law professor at Fluminense Federal University, said such an appeal was highly unlikely to reduce Bolsonaro’s sentence.
To file an appeal that could substantially modify the decision, the Supreme Court usually requires at least two dissenting votes.
There is no limit on the number of applications for clarification that can be filed, but the Supreme Court may consider consecutive petitions filed as an attempt to delay the final decision.
Such a strategy is “risky” for Bolsonaro’s lawyers, Padua said, because they could “give the Supreme Court an excuse to immediately declare the decision final.”
The Supreme Court said in a statement on Tuesday that seven other close associates of Bolsonaro were also convicted and all of them have filed appeals except Mauro Cid, who signed a plea agreement.
The court said the judge would decide on the appeal between November 7 and November 14.
Bolsonaro will begin serving time only after the appeals are exhausted.
The trial made global headlines. us President donald trump Ordered a 50% tariff on Brazilian imported goods and cited Bolsonaro’s case, which he called a “witch hunt”.
This led to a sharp decline in US–Brazil relations, which experts described as the lowest point in more than 200 years of relations.
Relations have improved. Lula and Trump spoke by phone and then met at the ASEAN summit in Malaysia last weekend.