Pimenta Neves, almost a decade of impunity
The murderer of his ex-girlfriend, journalist Pimenta Neves, who confessed, was tried and convicted in the first and second instances, remains free. How is this possible?
By Laura Diniz:
Journalist Antonio Pimenta Neves is lucky to be Brazilian. If he were a citizen of the United States, Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Argentina, Colombia, or Costa Rica, and had committed the crime he committed here in one of those countries, the probability of him being out of jail would be practically nil.
In August 2000, the journalist, then director of the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo, shot and killed his ex-girlfriend and also journalist Sandra Gomide, 32 years old.
The crime completed nine years last month, and Pimenta Neves – who confessed, was tried, and convicted in the first and second instances – remains free as a bird.
Worse than that: the chances that he will never go to jail – or that, in the end, he will only spend one year and eleven months there – are scandalously real. At 72 years old, Sandra Gomide's murderer leads a quiet and discreet life. Without responsibilities or obligations (thanks to two pensions, he has enough income not to work and doesn't work), he spends his days reading and browsing the internet.
He talks to friends and his twin daughters, who live in the United States, via computer and usually only watches TV when his team, São Paulo, is playing. A dachshund he named Channel keeps him company in his 930-square-meter house in Chácara Santo Antônio, a upscale neighborhood in São Paulo.
It's the same one he lived in before the crime.
On the few occasions he leaves, he uses one of his two cars: a 1998 Clio and a 1995 Peugeot. Sometimes he ventures out for coffee at the bakery or a beer with friends (at the end of last year, he was seen with a group of them enjoying a late spring afternoon at a neighborhood restaurant).
Other times, he hosts guests at home for lunch – as he did on June 11th, the Corpus Christi holiday (an occasion for which he prepared by going to the supermarket the day before to choose two bottles of wine). The journalist is in good health: he has stopped taking the antidepressants he started using shortly before killing his ex-girlfriend and only takes medication to control his blood pressure.
Last year, as he has a law degree, he tried to register with the Brazilian Bar Association. He was blocked for "lack of moral integrity." Apart from this setback, he goes through his days with the serenity of an innocent – even though he is a murderer.
In July 2000, after Sandra ended their relationship, Pimenta Neves fired her from the newspaper he directed, citing professional reasons. To friends, he said she had betrayed him, including professionally.
On August 20th, he put a .38 revolver in his pocket and drove to Haras Setti, in Ibiúna, in the interior of São Paulo, where he knew he would find Sandra – who, like him, was passionate about horses. After they argued, Pimenta drew the revolver and shot the young woman in the back. When she fell to the ground, he approached and fired a second shot, this time into his ex-girlfriend's head.
In 2006, he was convicted of the crime by a popular jury. In the same year, the sentence was confirmed by the Court of Justice (TJ) of São Paulo and, two years later, by the Superior Court of Justice (STJ).
How to explain the fact that he remains free? The answer lies, above all, in an ideological shift that began to take shape in the Supreme Federal Court (STF) in the early 2000s.
Until the 1990s, the STF was composed of a majority of so-called conservative ministers – a term that, in criminal law, indicates those who have a strict interpretation of the law, as opposed, for example, to "guarantists," who are more concerned with ensuring the defendant's fundamental rights.
Broadly speaking, conservatives are those who order imprisonment, and guarantists, or liberals, are those who order release. From 2003 onwards, the eleven-judge panel of the STF underwent seven replacements.
The fact that almost all the new ministers are liberal led to a thesis becoming prevalent in the court's decisions: the principle of the presumption of innocence, according to which no one will be considered guilty until all defense appeals have been judged.
In the era of conservative supremacy in the STF, a conviction in the second instance was considered sufficient for the defendant to be arrested. Now, with the guarantor hegemony, as long as he has the money to pay good lawyers and file successive appeals, he can remain free until the STF's final word, even if it takes almost a decade – as in Pimenta Neves' case.
The principle of presumption of innocence has already saved the journalist from jail on three occasions. In 2001, it was the main argument used by STF minister Celso de Mello to grant him the habeas corpus that ended his brief stay in jail (seven months).
In 2006, when he was sentenced by the Ibiúna Jury Court to nineteen years in prison, the judge allowed him to appeal in freedom, citing STF jurisprudence based on the presumption of innocence. Finally, in the same year, when his conviction was confirmed by the TJ of São Paulo and the appellate judges ordered his arrest, his lawyers obtained a habeas corpus for him in the STJ – again, based on the presumption of innocence.
Currently, Pimenta's defense is trying again to annul the 2006 jury. If the appeal is accepted, he will effectively be free forever. If it is denied, the journalist still has the right to appeal to the STF – and more than once. Only when (and if) the request is definitively denied will Pimenta have to serve his sentence. Discounted, however, are the seven months he spent in prison, leaving only one year and eleven months of jail time before he can go to a semi-open regime.
The principle that underpins Pimenta Neves' freedom guides the most modern constitutions in the world – it exists to ensure that the defendant does not serve an unjust punishment. In countries like the United States, however, it is not absolute – which means it does not apply, for example, to confessed defendants. "There, the presumption of innocence exists to the highest degree only when there is no indication that the accused committed the crime. Those who confess give up this principle," says prosecutor Marcelo Cunha de Araújo.
"In most democratic countries, the accused would already be in jail," says criminal lawyer Ricardo Alves Bento. In fact, regarding the journalist, what innocence is there to presume, given that he himself admitted to killing Sandra? "In this case, the legal guarantees are being used as a purely delaying tactic," says prosecutor Luiza Nagib Eluf.
And it is on this point that conservatives and liberals, lawyers and prosecutors agree: if defendants could not file dozens of appeals to disrupt proceedings and if justice were faster, aberrations like Pimenta Neves' would not exist. Legal appeals serve to prevent the accused from being a victim of arbitrary actions. But, in Brazil, they are often used for a far less noble purpose: perpetuating impunity.
The state has a monopoly on the legitimate use of force to prevent society from wallowing in barbarism, returning to dueling with pistols, or allowing its members to vent vendettas by shooting at their neighbors.
When, through negligence, ineptitude, or structural failure of the Justice system, the state fails to exercise this power, it creates a civilizational vacuum – which is precisely where murderers like Pimenta Neves find shelter.
If all rights stem from the right to live, taking someone's life is the crime par excellence: the greatest and most definitive of them. Pimenta Neves committed it, and in a cowardly manner. His freedom, like that of other unpunished murderers in the country, debases society and degrades us all.
